Benefits of the Discovery Process
The discovery process in any marketing project yields critical information that drives strategic development. While there’s a time and place to make gut-based decisions, when making an investment intended to build awareness and increase conversions, you want to use actual data!
For example, you can mine demographics in a social media audit, which will tell you if your target audience(s) is following and engaging with your content.
You can perform Google research on keywords that you wish to rank for and see a) if you are ranking and b) where your perceived and actual competitors are ranking. Remember: 71% of Google searches end on page 1. If you rank on page 2 and beyond, there’s some work to do, but that’s a conversation for another day.
When thinking about a renaming or rebranding, conducting surveys can yield audience sentiments about your organization, and you can ask questions around messages, colors, verbiage, and more.
Facilitating focus groups with customers (and prospective customers if you can secure them!) can produce a boatload of details–why they chose your product or services and what the experience has been, what other brands/organizations they considered, suggestions for improvement, and more.
It is a marketing partner’s job to have a lens on the client and industry landscape. By engaging in a discovery process, they can use all of the above data and more to:
Create audience personas
Draft key messages
Build a visual brand
Write a brand manifesto
Determine brand voice and tone
Build editorial calendars, content templates, and communication plans
Re-configure the promotional mix and accompanying tactics
Can a good strategy exist without a Discovery phase? Maybe. However, a strategy rooted in data will give you an enhanced level of confidence and ensure that you are set up for success.
