The discovery phase of any business is imperative as it sets a solid foundation for the entire company and brand. Without doing user research to understand who your ideal customer(s) is as well as testing to validate your business idea, you’re walking into a very expensive black hole.
This is exactly what Paige and Yoko, two savvy women with a business venture tied to the wedding industry, didn’t want to see happen with their new company. After much vetting, they reached out and decided to partner with us here at The Jibe.
We’ll be working with the duo throughout the entire process; from the discovery phase to the launch of their business. At this point in the project we’re in the midst of helping them understand who their ideal customers are through testing and research, how to best position their brand, and what their UVP will be.
They’ve already discovered so much and are having a great time. And of course, we’re having fun right along with them.
Alicia, our Marketing Strategist, recently sat down with Yoko and Paige to discuss what the process has been like thus far and what they’ve learned.
*Note Yoko and Paige have yet to come up with a name for their business.
Alicia: Can you describe to me in your own words the various elements of discovery you have gone through over the last couple of weeks?
Yoko: Putting together user personas has been really useful for us in this stage of the process. Thinking about where they work, their age range, where they hang out, what do they do, all those things and of course learning the language they use.
We realize that there is a lot of discovery that goes into finding out who our ideal customer or customers are. What we've done today is prioritize (features) the must haves, the should haves, and the could haves - and that’s been really useful for us to put that into levels of priority.
We have three different landing pages that we're going to be using for this stage of the testing and it will be interesting to see the results of those.
Paige: It’s given us a better idea of who we want to target for the initial launch and figure out what our product is and what we are building and what will go into the beta.
We are still very early stages. The phase we're going into now is the initial testing of the idea and how the market is going to potentially react to it. We will do that through the different landing pages and targeting different markets to see what the feed back is.
We've really gone into depth this week, fine tuning our business model. Thinking about what our differentiators are from the competition in the market and how best to monetize. The Jibe have been really great at pushing us to dig deep about these things.
Alicia:Through the research and discovery that you've been doing, was there any assumptions that you had about your users that you now have either validated or thought, ok, that was wrong?
Paige: Well it's a bit tricky to say because we're going to know a lot more next week than we do now.
Yoko: Once we see the results of the landing pages it will provide us with a better understanding. We are not sure if our early adopters are going to be "the tech-savvy girl in New York City" or “a Mid-West girl who is budget conscience,” so we're still in the midst of testing that out.
Alicia: Were there any of these topics/elements that stood out to be more valuable to you?
Paige: I think figuring out the user personas was the most difficult for us. At this point it is all about trying to get into the head of the customer and figuring out what they want and where our product fits into that market.
Yoko: Yes the irony is that we thought this part would be simple, but to do it in depth is a tricky process, but we think putting the work in now will really pay off once we launch.
Paige: The Jibe is helping us focus on what exactly we should be building. We are constantly doing little pivots on the product the more in depth we go. We have made a few good changes and they have helped up come up with some new potentially exciting features that we are going to test this week.
Yoko: Francis, Eric, and Vanessa, have helped us a lot. They've asked intelligent questions that we've had to get granular about, and it’s helping us shape what we think the product should be.
The Jibe is helping us focus on what exactly we should be building.
Alicia: Were there any moments where a lightbulb went off for you? Something unexpected came about?
Yoko: I think when they started asking us what makes us unique, and pushing us to create something better and more original than we had originally thought.
Paige: And thinking more about what is “the problem” that we are trying to solve for the customer.
Alicia:Did you have to drop some assumptions about your product and services that might otherwise not have been identified early and made it to launch?
Paige: We had some pretty strong ideas about some of the features we thought we needed to have that may be possibly placed on the back burner to either test whether we're going to do them at all or if it’s going to be an add on later to what we are doing.
Alicia:Do you feel that the path to building your new business is clearer for you now? How so?
Paige: I think it’s definitely getting clearer for us. The Jibe has helped us to think about some different channels to monetize and to get traction that we had not thought of before. It is great to have their experience and expertise with this.
The Jibe has helped us to think about some different channels to monetize
Alicia:What were your expectations when you started the discovery? Or did you have any expectations at all?
Yoko: I think it’s gone above and beyond what we expected so far and we are really excited to work on the next steps with the team.
Paige: We had been looking for a few months for a company to work with and were not 100% sold on any of them. Yoko came across The Jibe online and we were so impressed with Steve on the phone and with the proposal he sent over we were won over on the spot.
Yoko: He came back with detailed analysis of the process, and it was so above and beyond what all the other companies provided us we knew right away that we wanted to go with them.
Paige: So it was a real pleasure to get such amazing customer service right away, someone who provided attention to detail, and accomplished tasks when they said they were going to do them.
Yoko: Yes we are happy with the decision, and we feel like we're getting great value for money and that the progress is coming along really quickly and intelligently too.
It was a real pleasure to get such amazing customer service right away
Alicia:What are the key takeaways of these last 2 weeks for you?
Yoko: I think having a clearer picture of what our business is going to be about. I think after the next couple of weeks with the landing pages running, we'll have a more concise picture of where we should be headed, so we're really grateful for the testing, that’s something we really wanted to be part of the process for us.
Paige: And I think that they've really helped us with our vision for the company. The discovery phase has helped us to focus on what product we are building, who our market is, how we’re going to get to market.
Yoko: Yes, exactly. And our differentiators - how we're different and better than the competition.
Paige: I think already just in the first two weeks of the process we've learned a lot – I can see mistakes that we would have made and money we would have wasted.
Yoko: This has been really valuable so far.
They've (The Jibe) really helped us with our vision for the company
Alicia:If you had to do this exercise again, what would you do differently?
Paige: The only thing I might have liked is to have seen some of the worksheets ahead of time so we would've known what we were going to be doing. Just so we could have been a bit more prepared. But maybe this is all part of the process, and without the guidance, we might not have gotten to the same place we are now.
Yoko: That's true, it's hard to say. Having these discussions with Erik, Francis and Vanessa has really helped shape our answers and think about the answers for a different point of view.
Paige: What is great is the team has had some really good input regarding how to market the product. Its been great to bounce ideas around with people who are experienced and know what they're doing.
Yoko: Yes and get their expertise.
Alicia: If you had to choose 3 adjectives to describe this discovery process, what would they be?
Yoko: I would say the discovery process has been extremely fruitful, insightful. And enlightening in a way. We've learned a lot in the last two weeks.
Paige: Yes, I'd say enlightening and exciting as well as reassuring because I feel like we are gaining a better chance of succeeding with the product we are building.
Yoko: Yes, we are feeling more confident than when we first walked through the door now that we are going through this process with The Jibe.