James Fitzjohn, founder and director at independent strategy consultancy, Brew, explains how the marketing industry can better utilise management consultancy principles to deliver more successful outcomes for themselves and their clients.
The Discovery Phase.
An absolute hall-of-famer when it comes to the jargon soup that surrounds the consultancy world, however this staple instrument of the business consultant is being severely underused when it comes to marketing.
Different industries, different approaches I hear you cry, but with the scrutiny on marketing to deliver more (with less – urgh), getting a deeper read on the totality of your clients business can provide richer insights, support more interesting work and is an incredibly effective business development tactic.
The lack of uptake generally from the marketing community is puzzling, especially considering the often subjective conjecture that surrounds the process of creating marketing assets. Over the next few paragraphs, I will break down the most crucial activities of any discovery phase whilst outlining the tangible benefits for both the marketing practitioner (agency) and the internal marketing teams.
The History of Discovery
Management consultants were quick to ensure that Discovery was a non-negotiable milestone in their process, leaning on the sensible principle that knowledge needs to come before opinion. Financial solace could also be sought in the fact that consultants were being paid to look for treasure even if they never actually located the ‘X’.
It was fully embraced by technology and software consultants, who rightly wanted as much information as possible about the systems, applications and processes that would inform and impact their scope of work. The often quoted McKinsey paper of 2018, posited that over 50% of large IT projects went over their initial scoped budget, providing clear rationale for deep discovery to mitigate against the dreaded creep.
The birth of ‘digital’ agencies and their predilection for discovery was dependent on their origin path. Many who were born out of the IT space maintained their skilful use of discovery while those coming from a creative focused lineage adopted a more superficial approach, often consisting of a few conversations, internet searches and website clicks.
I am naturally generalising in what is an opinion piece. I recognise that there will be a whole plethora of agencies and marketing consultants who are performing effective, value-generating discovery phases for their clients. However after 20-years of working inside and in partnership with a broad range of different agencies, across various disciplines and geographies, I know that many are leaving opportunities on the table.
The Activity of Discovery
No two discovery phases will be equal and neither should they. Business complexity, length of relationship and project scope are all key variables in shaping the activities of an optimal workflow. However there are a couple of no-brainers that should form the building blocks of your discovery which I have highlighted and come resplendent with rationale.
Team Consultations – As with many aspects of life, spending time and talking to people is one of the most valuable ways that we grow. Your project appointment is likely to have been initiated by marketing, so engagement with the full team in either 1-2-1 interviews or small groups is a great method of understanding how the machine operates at all levels. Depending on project scope and size of the marketing team, a number of consultations should be reserved for adjacent departments such as sales, IT, product or logistics. This not only provides deeper business immersion, but it casts a light on the expectations of the marketing department in delivering on the objectives of the business. The whole point of the game some would argue.
Onsite Ethnography – Ask for a table in the hub of the office. Attend a sales call. Visit stores. Tour factories. Make the tea. Then watch and listen. How do the team talk about the product and/or service? What are their frustrations? What are the barriers to more sales? What collateral or tools are they using?
These basic tropes in ethnographic study have been deployed often by the author and have led to many strategic recommendations. Often the idea is hidden in plain sight, it’s just that no one thinks to look there in the first place. Just ask John Hegarty.
Customer Research – Speak to the people (your client’s customers) for whom you are tirelessly trying to please, second-guess, surprise and delight – and ask them what pleases them, what they are thinking about, what makes them surprised and what makes them delighted. Take the opportunity to go further than the research agency deck and hold some informative individual or group sessions with your clients’ customers to understand their motivations and attitudes. Combine this with some lapsed customers and ask them what went wrong, plus throw in some non-customers and ask why they don’t currently buy the brand. Nothing beats a qualitative methodology to capture the raw insights before mixing it with quantitative measures to extrapolate the scale of the sentiment. Overlay this with any digital analytics that you can lay your hands on and you will very quickly be able to paint the picture of barriers and potential solutions.
Track Journeys – You have heard from your clients’ customers, now walk a mile in their shoes. Mystery shop the product your client sells (where possible), visit showrooms, ask questions of their staff, return the product you have bought, click every website CTA, call their customer service number, sign-up for the newsletter and follow them on X. OK, maybe not the last one.
Existing Documentation – Nothing will please your client more than making sense and extracting additional ROI from their previously commissioned projects. Think back to those times when the 98-page research PDF was emailed over (not presented) because there is no one in the business left who properly understands it. Lean into those situations to review and understand the existing documentation and accelerate your understanding of the business and demonstrate a level of collaborative common sense to the client. Be the joiner of dots and the turner of stones.
The Benefits Of Discovery
Armed with a superior understanding of the clients business, you are now in a position to provide a solution (strategic or creative) that has their customer at its heart, has a stronger chance of navigating internal stakeholder approvals and is cognisant of the needs of other business functions. Whilst these are heady benefits by anyone’s standards, your analysis of the business should have identified numerous challenges that your own special skills can solve for. Perhaps your research identified that customers were time-poor and therefore a more streamlined website form might improve conversion. You could have noticed that the sales team were struggling to communicate product benefits and a batch of refreshed marketing collateral might help. Maybe a previously unknown communication channel is now available to support your campaign, providing additional reach and increasing the probability of delivering positive outcomes. Spend time prioritising these pain-points before brainstorming or briefing the relevant teams for solutions, giving you a roadmap of proposed activity with which to grow your client account.
But let’s not forget the paying client in this process. Good consultants will playback the key themes and observations from their discovery phase, communicating the untold truths or blind spots that have been overlooked or maybe forgotten. A well informed activity roadmap will aid business planning with specific initiatives being able to be shared between agency and internal teams. Your collaborative spirit will have shone through as you have included a broad cohort of team members and adjacent departments into your process for the good of the overall business. And crucially, it demonstrates a level of vulnerability and self-improvement, signalling that you don’t have all the answers but you know they can be obtained. A vital attribute of the modern business leader.
Discover the joy of discovery for yourself.
