Elevating the Customer’s Journey: The Discovery Phase

The customer’s journey is the path your customer’s take with your brand from first learning about your business through the sale, and ideally becoming a loyal advocate for your business. The customer’s journey is broken into five phases: discovery, consideration, convert, retention, and loyalty & advocacy. In this post, we’ll discuss the discovery phase.

About the Discovery Phase of the Customer’s Journey

The discovery phase is the first stage in the customer’s journey with your business. During this stage, the customer is either aware of their problem. They are searching for potential solutions, Googling questions and looking for who or what can help them solve their problem. Your focus during the discovery phase is to bring awareness of your brand to the customer.

Do not, (I repeat, DO NOT!), try to make a sale during this phase! Let’s leave the cold calling to telemarketers and our Alma Maters!

Let’s jump in and talk about how you can improve your customer’s journey during stage one, discovery.

About the Customer

During the discovery phase, your customer has acknowledged they have a problem. They are conducting a broad search for solutions using search engines, asking people they trust for referrals, and looking at the options they have for the solution. A customer’s “problem” is not necessarily fixing something or a negative aspect, instead the problem is how you can help them fulfill a need or want. For example, someone getting married will need a photographer.

Action Item: Think about the searches your customer’s will use when searching for your products or services. What platforms are they using? Are your profiles and website optimized for search engines?

Your Brand’s Goals, Responsibilities, & Opportunities

Your main priority is making potential customer’s aware of your products and services. The best way to establish yourself in their mind is to provide value through practical advice. Remember, you are generating a lead, not closing a sale.

Action Item: Identify your ideal customer. Understand who they are and what they want. Where do they show up online? Engage with your customers to develop trust and build relationships.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

A KPI is industry jargon for ways to measure your business’s success. In the discovery phase, you want to measure engagement and not conversion rate to understand if you are meeting a goal. To track your success on social media in the discovery phase, evaluate your impressions, reach, and views (not just likes, friends!). If you pay for any social media platforms or services (social media manager, planning platform, paid ads, etc), cost per 1000 impressions. For your website, make sure to set-up Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track your analytics and work on improving the SEO of your website.

Action Item: At the beginning of each month, review the previous month’s metrics and set goals for the upcoming month’s KPIs. Make sure you are setting realistic and attainable goals. When you review the metrics, ask yourself why are these my results? What did I do to get these? Are you seeing a return on your efforts? What can you do to improve?

Touchpoints

Your brand’s touchpoints are pivotal in creating an experiential brand. (To learn more about creating intention touchpoints, check out this article!) During the discovery phase, social media, search engines, and your website are great digital touchpoints to focus on. Make sure to optimize for search engines and make your website mobile friendly. Long form content such as blogs and YouTube videos are great for search engines and they can be broken into smaller bits of content for instagram posts and TikTok videos.

Action Item: Ask yourself, what phrases and questions are my customer’s searching for during the discovery phase? Create content and shape your website copy to answer these questions.