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“Get to know your customers”—it’s the first piece of advice given to insurance agents and other business owners, either getting started or building up their businesses. To build a truly effective marketing campaign, you need to know exactly who is likely to buy the insurance you sell, why they buy it—and the reasons behind the reasons, the emotional triggers that, particularly in consumer insurance markets, can make the idea of buying so much more compelling.

But getting to know your customers doesn’t always just happen automatically. Here are a few ideas for understanding your demographics, their needs, and their motivations.

Look at who buys from you already. Who are the people who’ve mostly bought from you in the past? Worried parents buying health insurance for their adult children? Cash-strapped drivers looking for the most affordable auto insurance they can get? Well-heeled suburbanites looking for a good homeowners policy? Maybe you have several different types of customers for all the coverage you sell—or even for a single line of coverage.

Keep track of social media conversations. What are the biggest hassles and consumer gripes about the insurance products you sell—and about insurance in particular? Social media is great for keeping track of conversations that affect or relate to your business, and it provides an opportunity to eavesdrop on potential customers talking and venting amongst themselves. Once you’ve identified a few key gripes, you can figure out which of those you can address in your marketing.

Put out a survey. There are plenty of online survey sites out there that will let you create and send surveys to your customers for free—check out SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, and SurveyGizmo for a start. Your surveys could focus on your customer service, your customers’ insurance wants and needs, or demographic information that could help you with your marketing.

Get out into the real world. There’s a lot you can do online—but nothing takes the place of getting to know and have conversations with customers and prospective customers in the real world. Make connections with potential customers in your community by getting involved in an organization that attracts the type of people who buy your insurance; join business associations and attend expos and events that will get you mingling. Then have conversations—and find out what people who would buy from you think about insurance coverage, what they need, and how your company can help.

Getting to know your customers can be highly rewarding for your business. It can be done both online in a few spare moments during the work day, and offline in your community and through organizations and events that attract the type of audience you sell to. Either way you choose, it’s a far better bet to challenge your previous assumptions about your target market—both initially and periodically throughout your business—and build your next marketing campaign on a sound understanding of who your target customers are and the needs they have.