Customer Discovery & Development
Turning hypothesis into facts.
Customer Discoveryto test your ideas
Don’t waste time on a solution the market doesn’t want.
Understding Customer Discovery Phases
One digital marketing plan, to build a community full of loyal fans.
State Hypotheses
Phase 1
Deconstructs the founders' vision into the nine parts of the business model canvas (product, customers, channels, demand creation: revenue models, partners, resources, activities, and cost structure).
Then your team writes one-page briefs about each of the hypotheses, including the list of experiments or tests you'll need to conduct to prove or disprove each one.
Test the Problem
Phase 2
You conduct experiments to test your "problem" hypotheses. This helps you understand how important the problem is and how big it can be. You do so by testing most elements of the business model, including the value proposition, pricing, channel strategy, and sales process.
Your goal is to turn hypotheses into facts or discard them if they're wrong and replace them with new hypotheses. In the process, you'll gain a deep understanding of customers' business, workflow, organization, and product needs. When all the facts are in, update your results on the canvas.
Test the Solution
Phase 3
You test your "solution," presenting your value proposition (product, pricing, features, and other business model components) and the minimum viable product to customers and compare their responses to the "pass/fail" goals you developed earlier in the process.
Verify or Pivot
Phase 4
You stop and assess the results of the experiments you've conducted and verify that you have:
• a full understanding of customers' problems, passions, or needs
• confirmed the value proposition solves problems, passions or needs
• determined that a sizable volume of customers exists for the product
• learned what customers will pay for the product
• made certain the resulting revenue should deliver a profitable business
Conducting Customer Discovery
We follow the steps laid out in our infographic to take the first steps for turning your idea into a viable venture.
