If you haven’t heard the news: Things have changed. Your company no longer operates in a profit vacuum, where your only consistent feedback comes from shareholders. While business scrambled to stop our economy from completely imploding, the consumer acquired a substantial hold over the success and failure of brands.

The freshly empowered consumer—encouraged and enabled by a flattening in communications access and technological advances in the almighty World Wide Web—is driving innovation, demanding added value and dictating how companies handle customer relations. And, if you continue to operate under the old paradigm, this new feedback smorgasbord will quickly humble you. 

Welcome to the new world order.

The consumer’s ability to visibly, powerfully and swiftly vocalize his/her thoughts, rather than simply purchase or not purchase your product, has forever changed how the world does business. That’s not to say you are helpless to steer your brand towards success or away from failure. The internal actions of your company significantly contribute to how your brand is perceived by the public. In truth, they are more important than ever. But the power has shifted noticeably in favor of a bottom up environment, where the top can only thrive if the foundation commits to its success.

Armed with this potentially startling insight regarding the immense power a modern-day, Web-savvy consumer now holds—let us ask you a question:

Do you actually know who your consumer is?

No, really. Do you know who they are?

Have you dug deep into the research + found out things about them that even a sophisticated hack into Facebook doesn’t reveal?

Do you know where they get their coffee every morning? Do they drink it in a Styrofoam cup, their grandmother’s china or a stainless steel travel mug? Do they take cream? Sugar? Sugar-free vanilla syrup? Or all of the above?

Do you know whether they’re into AMC’s Mad Men or MTV’s Jersey Shore? Maybe they don’t believe in watching TV period. 

Do you know what sports their kids play? Whether they’re passionate about raw foods or deep-frying? Are they runners or gym rats or yoga fiends? Are they politically active? Do they go to church or synagogue or morning prayers at the mosque?

Are they left brainers or right brainers? Doers or thinkers? Do they offset their power usage with renewable energy credits?

Is local, organic or convenience more important to them? What color is their car? Are they dog people? Cat people? Beer lovers? Or winos?

OK, OK. We admit—You don’t need to answer all these questions to effectively reach your target customer—and they’d probably consider you a stalker if you tried. The point is, you need to find out how your target consumer acts, thinks and feels outside the built environment of the point-of-purchase (though you need to know how they’ll act there as well). Get to know your customers on their terms. Find out what matters to them. Discover what they respond to. Determine what they detest.

Armed with that knowledge, you can design and build a brand experience that resonates with the people you care the most about. Then take what you’ve built and meet them where they are—not just halfway—but 100 percent of the way. Go directly to them.

Chances are, upon arrival, you’ll find others like them in the spaces—real or online—they inhabit. If you’ve played your hand well, you’ll be able to pick up like-minded consumers and turn them into loyal evangelists.

But you won’t get there without first taking the time to learn what your consumer is looking for. Henry Ford famously said that if his customers were tapped to drive product innovation, they would have asked for faster horses + the automobile never would have become the mainstay of American transportation.

Some would use that quote to justify the decision to ignore the intelligence of the consumer. That’s a dangerous line of thought to tread if you want to build a successful brand.

We prefer to look at it like this: It wasn’t the consumer’s job to invent the automobile. Karl Benz (of Mercedes-Benz) took care of that in 1886. But Ford did well to heed the real need middle-class Americans were seeking to fill—affordable, reliable transportation. He listened, learned and then delivered value beyond their expectation.