What is Discovery?
"Client discovery is typically a fact-finding process that allows the professional and their team to quickly yet thoroughly investigate the client's specific project or goal, their broader situation in the market, and any historical data available."
So you've just got a fancy new proposal and you're liking most of what you see except...what the heck is a "discovery process"? For those of you who don't work in agencies, firms, or other professional consulting service businesses, Discovery is probably just a cable channel to you (and part of a catchy bloodhound gang tune). But for those of us who fancy ourselves trusted advisors, client discovery is typically a fact-finding process that allows the professional and their team to quickly yet thoroughly investigate the client's specific project or goal, their broader situation in the market, and any historical data available.
How is 2oddballs Discovery Process Different?
At 2oddballs we take discovery a bit further than just research — we take action! Our discovery process includes all of the above, yes, but we also investigate and often untangle the cluster of digital tools and services the client uses or has used. As small business owners ourselves, we get it. You didn't start A lot of our clients absolutely hate digital marketing tasks and technology. They work with their hands and heads outside, away from offices and computers, and they prefer it that way. Many times clients come to us after having been frustrated by their own efforts or by the efforts of other companies. Unfortunately, after having so many cooks in the marketing kitchen, sometimes their digital presence and knowledge of the digital tools they use or have used is — let's say — less than optimal. Fear not! When our clients sign on to the Oddball family, they get a crack team of digital detectives, ready to take on the task of unwinding your marketing ball of yarn. Our clients want someone they can trust to "just handle it" without bogging them down in all the minutiae of digital marketing tools, technical processes, and jargon.
What Do You Need From Me — The Client?
The client's role in discovery is crucial. We want to do our jobs well, which will require us to get information from you. At the same time we don't want to pester you endlessly at all the worst times. We want working with us to be a relief, not a new source of stress! Below are a few (not all) items we will almost certainly need from you, unless we already have them.
- Access to your website (e.g. Wordpress site login) and/or website hosting location (webhost) such as GoDaddy, BlueHost, Namecheap, HostGator, etc.. Alternatively, you could also just provide us with the contact info for whoever manages your website. This can be accomplished in one of several ways. Client's often just provide us with their current webhost's login or their "cpanel" login. However, with places like Bluehost and GoDaddy, you can simply share access to your account with our accounts on those platforms. Ask your lead Oddball what is appropriate for your specific situation, needs and wants. Want to know more about 2oddballs' Hosting Packages? Check out THIS article.
- Access to your domain/URL (www.ExampleDomain.com) and/or your "domain name server" (DNS). Your domain is the easy-to-remember, human-readable address of the website. One of the primary functions of your DNS is to translate your FunName.com URL into the computer-readable number address for your website, called an Internet Protocol address or IP address. Your DNS is often hosted by your domain registrar (i.e. where you bought your domain from.) but not always. Sometimes your DNS can be hosted in the same location as your website. And more and more these days, all of it is held by one company who does all the things, including domains and web hosting (GoDaddy, Bluehost, HostGator, etc.)
- We'll need copies of your brand assets, which could include your logo(s) and other brand-specific graphics, fonts, color codes, and even copy or brand-specific language. We typically create a shared folder in our online document management platform dedicated to your account. We then provide you a link to bookmark so you can upload any requested files as you gather them and also have constant access to any work products we create on your behalf.
- Pictures and Videos — start working now to gather as many pictures and videos as you can. One of two things will likely happen: you will either discover that you really need to have some new pictures and videos made ASAP or you will happily realize you have all the media we will need to build the site. Either way, we'll need good materials to work with for the site, so best to get cookin' on this now! Go look at any good website, and I promise you'll find a lot of good pictures and probably a top-notch video or two. We can use stock photos temporarily, but you don't want your brand to feel fake. The trait folks seek most online right now — the trait that is most scarce — is authenticity.
- We will likely need access to your company's social media. Social media provides marketers with a wealth of information, including historical marketing activity, social listening, and "insights" aka analytics. Speaking of analytics...
- Analytics and reporting tools are invaluable assets to any business. Google Analytics, for example, is a powerful (and free!) tool for analyzing traffic, acquisition, and behavior on web properties such as web apps and websites. Apps such as CallRail help marketers track leads from phone calls, and HotJar is one of several "behavioral analysis" tools on the market today that allow you to, among other things, actually watch recordings of users using your website! Whatever tools you're using to collect and analyze data on your marketing or business in general, giving us access to those tools is one of the fastest ways to provide deep insight into your world.
- Perhaps most importantly, we need to know your goals, your vision, your mission for your business. Knowing where you are is important, but knowing where you want to get to is — in our opinion — a prerequisite for any successful advisory relationship.
While this is not an exhaustive list, and some of these things may not apply to you, hopefully you get the gist and you feel more prepared for the project ahead. Now go start looking for pictures! And send us your logo! ;)
Is All This Work Really Necessary?
Is anything really necessary? What does necessary really mean? Just kidding. Short answer: to work with us, yes. We're a "measure twice, cut once" type of company. We look at it this way, you're better off paying us a little extra to "measure twice" on the front end, than paying someone to redo work on the back end. In one instance, we literally saved a client a $1000/month before we even finished discovery! For that particular client, when we started to investigate all their digital assets and online accounts, we discovered they had been running Google Ads — unknowingly, unoptimized, and unmanaged in any way — for nearly a year!
The Bottom Line is...the Bottom Line.
We haven't always charged a discovery fee. In our early days, we didn't charge a fee for all the time, treasure and expertise we were putting into preparing the client and ourselves for the project ahead. We were spending a ton of time on carefully cultivating the client-advisor relationship, investigating and preparing the client's digital ecosystem, and gleaning a better understanding of the client's business, marketing activities, and industry. We were doing a ton of work and not getting paid for it, which starts to weigh on the business after a time. Thus was born the Discovery fee. It's a good thing for everyone in the sense that we can continue to provide the genuinely personalized, expert service we believe our clients deserve without the nagging realization that any amount of time spent going the extra mile on the front end was hurting the company's ability to sustain itself.