Let’s face it. We live in the ultimate “what have you done for me lately?” economy.

Your customers want to be WOWed. Right now. Yesterday’s WOW was great – but that was yesterday. So much has changed between then and now.

Anything less than WOW is, well, vulnerable. Vulnerable to other products and services. Vulnerable to other categories. Vulnerable to being obsolete. If your customers are not finding their WOW with you, right now, you can sure bet they are looking for it somewhere else.

Here are some things you can do right now to help ensure you are delivering the WOW your customers require…

First, let me mention Brand ManageCamp 2017 speaker Alex Hunter, who has made a career of understanding WOW. By harnessing the science, the data, and the art of great branding, Alex has spent his career bringing WOW back to businesses. At Brand ManageCamp, he will teach us about the art and the science of WOW and, through examples from big brands and small, show us how we can consistently create the WOW our brands need.

So, come see Alex at Brand ManageCamp (Sept 26-27, Las Vegas) – he is amazing.

In the meantime, though, here are some things I propose you should be thinking about as you strive for your own brand’s WOW:

1 – Re-define your target. One person’s WOW is another’s MEH. And, unless you truly know to whom you are speaking (and, by definition, to whom YOU ARE NOT speaking) you cannot hope to get anywhere near WOW. When I was at the Campbell Soup Company, we used to butt heads with Progresso over the condensed soup business. Progresso would make fun of us for having small amounts of meat and vegetables and point out how adults want more. This was a tough battle until we figured out there was a target that didn’t want more meat and vegetables – children. To kids, lots of noodles was the WOW. Defining the correct target immediately moved a MEH to a WOW. Lesson? If your product sell seems like an uphill battle – maybe you are climbing the wrong hill.

2 – Gain a DEEP understanding of that target. WOW involves knowing your target’s needs and wants better than they know them. When you tell them about your WOW and why it is relevant to them, they should be saying “AHA! This brand GETS me. It understands me. It IS me.” Sometimes marketers talk about their AHA moment – the point in time everything sunk in. In my opinion, though, the only AHA moment that matters is the one of your customer. The point in time when she or he says AHA! That’s when you know you understand them in the way they craved to be understood.

3 – Deliver products or services that address the target’s AHA needs and wants better than anyone else. It is not enough to know your target’s needs and wants – you actually have to deliver things that meet them. In ways that no one does (or, ideally, can). If you cannot do that, find other needs/wants to deliver against. Or find a different target. Commodities rarely WOW anyone. When was the last time you were WOWed by a head of lettuce?

4 – Tell your target WHY you can meet their needs/wants with WOW better than anyone else. Tell them to frame the context by which anyone else’s message will be received. Tell them so they don’t just understand the WOW but they understand your commitment to the WOW – which, it can be argued, is as important or even more so than the WOW itself in the long-run.

5 – REPEAT. REPEAT. REPEAT. Because, by the time you get through with all this, your target may have changed. Maybe how your target defines WOW has changed. Maybe new competition is altering the way they view WOW. Maybe their needs/wants have changed. If there is one thing you can be sure of, it is that something has changed. And today’s WOW can easily become tomorrow’s MEH if you are not careful. Are you currently planning on a yearly basis? If so, that is probably way too long. Depending on your demographic/psychographic, your customer’s definition of WOW may be changing on a monthly, weekly, even daily basis. The days of rigid annual planning are over. You must become more flexible, more nimble, and more open to the idea that today’s WOW could quickly become far less so.

So there you have it. 5 things you can be doing right now to better deliver WOW. That being said, Alex Hunter is far more experienced in delivering WOW and I, for one, cannot wait to learn how he has repeatedly done it for big brands and small alike. Some if you are looking for WOW inspiration, come see Alex and a bunch of other fantastic speakers at Brand ManageCamp 2017.