What is a Discovery?
At SOULO, every solution for every business is different. We believe that for our clients to succeed, our ideas and creations need to be as unique as they are; this is why we believe in Ideas. Create. Results. To deliver bespoke products and recommendations, we need to get to know our clients and their businesses as well as they do. Maybe even better. This is where the discovery process begins.
When we first get to know a client, we start by taking stock of what’s important to our client’s brand, such as logos, colors, slogans, etc. After we have a basic understanding of the key assets, we explore more in-depth with a brand audit and the discovery process.
The brand audit is usually conducted first, followed by the discovery process. The brand audit gives the client the chance to tell us what they think their business is about and what it does well. This is also a time for the client to tell us what long term goals they have for their business.
Then it’s time for the discovery process. We go in-depth to find what strengths the business has, who their audience is, and what direction the company is moving. If our findings are in line with how our client views their business, great! All we need to do is refine and polish. But more often, our findings highlight different strengths and weaknesses than our client perceives, and perhaps different audiences than they originally thought should be their target. And that’s okay! That’s why we’re here. It’s important for us to understand both how our clients perceive their business and how their customers perceive that business.
Once we understand each perspective, we can begin looking for the problem areas where our client’s message, brand identity, and audience engagement are hindered or lost entirely.
So, how do we actually discover what we need to know? We ask lots of questions about all aspects of the business. Some questions our client can answer, and some questions must be answered by the customer base our client wishes to attract.
Common topics are:
- Core values
- Target audience
- Geographic characteristics
- Demographic characteristics
- Customer persona development (1-3 personas) - fictional representation of the target audience based on key traits identified during audience analysis
- Competitive analysis - review and analysis of key competitors (up to 3)
- Brand reputation/perception
- Online visibility
Example of questions we strive to answer during our discovery process:
- Are you attracting customers in person or online?
- How easy is it to find your business, either in person or online?
- When your customers interact with your brand, do they feel like it’s a brand and a product they trust? Do they remember your brand at all?
If it’s important to your business, we want to know about it!
Discovery Lite vs. Discovery Plus: What's the Difference?
Based on our client’s needs and the complexity of their customer journey, we may recommend the discovery lite process instead of the more in-depth discovery process. Why do we offer two? Like we said before: every solution is different.
The primary difference between these two approaches is the depth of investigation and the number of customer personas we craft for each client. The discovery lite process offers only one customer persona. This is a good time-saver for businesses that already have solidly established audiences. The discovery plus process offers up two to three different customer personas for businesses that don’t have a good handle on their target audience or are transitioning to new ones.
Why is this Important?
Perhaps the most important aspect of the discovery process is that SOULO gets to know every aspect of our customer’s business as if it were our own. To create a good strategy, we need to have a good understanding of what will benefit the client.
Secondly, the discovery process helps to illuminate problem areas, or simply areas in which our client and their customers are not on the same page. Not all of these discoveries are problems – perhaps a client’s business is doing something right or offering something unique, but the client overlooks it because it doesn’t fit with their idea of their company. Part of the journey is deciding what aspects of the business need to change and which need to stay the same.
Lastly, this is an integral step in crafting a strategic plan going forward. As an agency, we will come up with ideas and recommendations that best fit the needs of our client. Our recommendations could be a mix of digital marketing, web design, graphic design, video, or print. SOULO will also carefully plan the timing, quantity, and distribution of those materials - our goal is to create success stories for our clients!
Interested in creating your success story with SOULO? Explore our website for some real life examples, or give us a call at 612-334-5679.
