Strategy: Discovery
Discovery creates a foundation of knowledge that produces the best marketing results.
Discovery Deep Dive
The discovery process is often overlooked, but we deem it to be essential. It enables us to develop effective strategies that leverage your strengths while avoiding unnecessary risks that can arise due to insufficient data. It creates a foundation of knowledge about your organization that informs all other work, empowering your team and ours to achieve the best results. Learn more about discovery.
Discovery: Recommended Five-Phase Process
Each of these phases is explained in detail below.
One or two stakeholder intake sessions and information gathering
Marketing and sales audit of existing assets and processes
Customer assessment of perception and experience
Internal assessment of perception and experience
Discovery report and next-step recommendations
One: Intake Sessions
We facilitate one or two intake sessions with your organization’s senior leadership team to develop an accurate understanding of your overall business, growth objectives, stakeholder accountabilities, R&D, manufacturing, distribution, pricing, sales and marketing processes. These sessions are best conducted in person if possible. They are very valuable to us—and to you—because they:
Enable us to build the foundation of knowledge required for effective marketing.
Allow senior leaders to express candid opinions and uncover gaps in internal alignment so that we can move the team toward consensus and agreement about organizational and marketing objectives.
Create a forum to refine existing objectives, goals or ideas about branding and marketing.
Two: Marketing and Sales Audit
We ask you to gather and give us a collection of all promotional efforts from the past two years. This includes links to websites and videos, email campaigns, collateral, press coverage, media relations efforts, tradeshow event attendance, brand activation events, etc. You’ll find the audit enlightening because:
It offers clarity on where your efforts are strong—and weak—so we know what gaps to fill.
It informs your Marketing Plan by highlighting strategies and tactics that need to be prioritized.
It gives your marketing team the evidence often needed to gain upper management’s support.
Three: Customer Perception and Experience Assessment
The purposes of this assessment are 1) to benchmark the current quality of the relationship between your company and its customers and prospects, and 2) to document how they perceive your company and/or products relative to your company’s performance, the marketplace and your competitors. The assessment can be conducted via online surveys, one-on-one interviews, focus groups or some combination of these. This is valuable to:
Gain insight into how well the company is taking care of its customers, and where it needs to improve the experience.
Determine the level of brand awareness, brand preference, product knowledge and brand associations they have.
Reveal customers’ opinions about the character of the company, as perceived by not only customers but the world at large.
Four: Internal Perception and Experience Assessment
The purposes of this assessment are to 1) benchmark the current quality of the relationship between your company and its employees and stakeholders, and 2) to document how they perceive your company in order to assess to what degree overall employee perceptions align with that of the organization and its leadership. The assessment can be conducted via online surveys, one-on-one interviews, focus groups or some combination of these. This is valuable to:
Gain insight into how well the company is taking care of its employees, and where it needs to improve the experience.
Determine how well employees understand, and are on board with, the organization’s purpose, long-term objectives and strategies.
Reveal employees’ opinions about the character of the company, as perceived internally and most likely by partners and suppliers..
Five: Discovery Report
Once we’ve completed the intake sessions, the marketing and sales audit, and customer / internal assessments, we process and interpret the information and deliver a written report that:
Creates awareness, clarity and improved consensus among company leaders regarding the current condition of the organization and its goals.
Codifies a knowledge base that enables us to confidently plan the marketing strategies and tactics that will be most effective and appropriate.
Helps to rally support from upper management regarding the funding or resources needed for improvement.