What this amounts to is knowing what questions you need to ask yourself and find answers for. I do not intend or hope to cover every single question you should consider, and some industries will have a unique aspect to them that will change what you need to consider. Still, my hope is that this list will show you where to begin, and you can continue from here.

The first question is what the central theme to your business will be. What are you going to be providing for people that they cannot get anywhere else? Is it a certain product you sell, do you bring a certain kind of experience to the table you do not think anyone else can match, or are you more dedicated to helping them than the competition is? You need to pick something as your central theme, which will be at the heart of whatever brand name you go with.

Next ask yourself who your customers are. Are they part of a certain income bracket, part of a certain social group, a certain age demographic, or a certain location? There are all sorts of different things that can dictate who your customers are, but you need to know them by face and know exactly where you can find them.

How much room for growth is there with this customer base? Are you going for such a broad audience that you will not have any trouble growing? If that is the case, are you trying to reach too many people at once? Will you be able to focus down your marketing enough to reach them, or perhaps you need to go for a more focused group of people?

What kind of marketing is going to work best to reach these people? Are you going to begin with some custom greeting cards in order to introduce yourself to them? For this to work you would need a mailing list, so do you know where you can acquire a solid mailing list in order to reach your customers?

Maybe you do not feel like custom greeting cards and instead want to go with posters instead. Do you know some good locations for those posters that will reach your customers the best?

What kind of hook do you plan on using with your marketing? This is going to relate to whatever the original theme is, but you still need to have a unique hook in order to apply this theme to your customers. How are you going to be improving your customer's lives? This is going to relate heavily to whatever your hook is.

Those are the first questions I can think of. Now it is up to you to figure out what else needs to be both asked and answered before your marketing can begin.