As a marketer of anything, your target audience should always be your primary concern, especially when you're launching a new product. Furthermore, you should keep monitoring the target audience throughout the product launch. It is helpful to think of this in terms of public speaking. As marketers, we all are called upon to deliver speeches at many levels and to many different audiences.

Any great presenter will tell you that the first rule of public speaking is to know your audience. The second rule is to always speak to their interests. Violate these rules, and you risk boring your listeners, bewildering them, alienating them, or even angering them.

Following these rules requires preparation, mostly in the form of gathering information and listening. Sometimes, you think you know your material so well you don’t give the presentation much thought. So, you pull out the trusty PowerPoint that knocked them dead at the Plant Engineering and Maintenance Convention in Las Vegas, and head for Cleveland for your speaking engagement at the Electrical Engineering Convention. Ten minutes into the presentation, your audience is giving you that zombie look because you failed to tailor your presentation to their interests. There are differences between these two groups, and although they may be subtle, they are important to the two different audiences.

The same rules that apply to public speaking can and should be applied to marketing. If you want to know what to say, who to say it to, and how to say it, you must do your homework. This homework is called “account planning” or “market research”, and it's designed to help us understand the point of view of the target audience, which in turn helps us predict how they will respond.

Account planning takes many forms. It could involve qualitative or quantitative market research; it might require surveys, polls, or one-on-one interviews; it might measure an audience's attitude, awareness, or usage; it could take into account the attitudes of employees, competitors, distributors, or consumers. Regardless of the specific methods used, the desired result is always the same: to understand people and learn how brands and products fit into their lives. For companies who want to ensure that their messages will be authentic, effective, relevant, and compelling, account planning is compulsory.

For example, a recent project involved working for several days in a retail store that carried the client’s products and listening to customers. Along with the information from previous focus groups, we were able to determine consumer motivations, which helped us reshape the brand and craft the most appropriate messages for the ad campaign.

Though account planning can be an extremely involved process, here are three basic rules to help you evaluate the potential success of your product, service, idea or ad campaign. To ensure success, the results of your research should allow you to answer the following with a resounding “yes.”

1.Does the person or group understand the message or how the product works?
2.Is the ad campaign or product claim believable?
3.Do they care?

Get out in the marketplace, talk to the people, go three for three and voila, the odds are in your favor.