You use the term "investment" -- do you invest in stock market / bitcoin / real estate by buying whatever looks cool, and chalking up your losses to the learning process, or do you research your choices and look for ROI opportunities??
Yes, the idea here is, "understand who you're marketing to and what they're looking for before you start building," and the phrasing used is what it is because that's catchier, but it's still not particularly concrete phrasing.
That is certainly the understanding of laymen. However, if you talk to people who work in sales, and look at their "pipelines" for creating sales leads, followup, closing, and whatever else they do, you get the sense that "selling" is actually an extensive, multi-part process. At least I think that's the view most sales professionals would have.