Customer discovery must run deep. You need to talk with a lot of people and you need to probe deeply with each of them. That means understanding their hopes, fears, aspirations, anxieties, beliefs, attitudes, values and more. While a highly trained marketing research moderator may use a variety of qualitative research techniques (including projection, ideation, guided imagery, sorting exercises, etc.) to discover these motivations and behavioral drivers, you can do much of this yourself by asking open-ended response questions and spending more time listening than talking.
The types of questions that can elicit deeper responses include the following:
- What keeps you up at night?
- What is your most pressing need right now?
- If this product or brand were a movie/book/car/party/musical genre/food/etc., what type of movie/book/car/party/musical genre/food/etc. would it be and why?
- How does it make you feel?
- What is missing?
- Do you think the product says anything about you, about who you are?
- Would you recommend this to a friend or colleague? Why or why not?
- What about this appeals to you?
- What is the most important need this would fulfill?
I will give you an example of superficial customer insight versus deep customer insight.
Superficial Insight
Q: Why did you purchase a Tesla?
A1: Because gasoline prices are soaring, electric vehicles (EVs) make increasing sense financially.
A2: Because I care about the environment.
Deeper Insight from Deeper Probing
Q: Why did you purchase a Tesla?
A1: I have always admired Elon Musk and wanted to buy one of his cars.
A2: Teslas are the coolest, newest cars on the road.
A3: Tesla acceleration makes it fun to drive.
A4: Tesla stereo systems are "to die for." I enjoy tooling around listening to some of my favorite music.
A5: I like their clean lines inside and out. They are aesthetically pleasing.
A6: I love showing my car off to others.
A7: I want to support society's transition from fossil fuel powered vehicles to EVs.
A8: I want to help slow down climate change.
A9: When I drive a Tesla, people view me as successful, progressive, an early adopter and environmentally conscious.
A10: Teslas are really fun to drive. They perform very well on the road.
A11: I can always beat other cars across an intersection after a full stop at a stoplight or stop sign.
A12: Teslas have fun "toys" - whoopee cushion noises under seats, light show, caraoke, Netflix movies, etc.
A13: I am just really happy when I am driving my Tesla. It is a joy to drive.
Looking at this list that was compiled from deeper probing, we now have to determine which of these are the primary drivers of the purchase decision. And then we have to distill that to a unique value proposition and brand messaging.
A possible unique value proposition for Teslas given this list of purchase motivations might be:
- Teslas are the coolest cars on the road. They are really fun to drive and they are good for the environment.
Asking your family, friends and colleagues if they like your new product or service idea is not customer discovery. Try for a minimum of 60 interviews. If this seems like an overwhelming task, set aside two hours each week to conduct a few customer interviews. Breaking the task up into smaller chunks will make it seem easier and ongoing customer discovery is better that one-time customer discovery anyway.
The only way to arrive at a truly compelling unique value proposition for your startup is to base it on thoughtful and rigorous customer discovery.
