Timelines that get extended, additional concepts that need to be created and countless rounds of refinements. These are just a couple of things you can run into as a brand or website designer during client projects that can cause a lot of frustration.
There are several things you can do to make your client processes smoother but the 2 main things that can be improved to reduce these frustrations is by improving your client qualification process and your brand discovery process.
So, let’s discuss what exactly a thorough brand discovery process is and how you can set this up.
In this blog, you’ll learn:
- What is brand discovery?
- What a thorough brand discovery process can do for you
- Methods to use to do brand discovery
- Topics you need to discuss during the brand discovery process
- And ways to set up the brand discovery process
What is brand or client discovery?
There is so much overlap in terms within the design world that it can lead to a lot of confusion. Not only for you as the designer, but also for your clients who need to find the right designer and package for them. Often they will compare what is included in your packages with the packages of other designers so it’s important to be as clear as possible about what you offer and what your process is.
Especially when it comes to brand discovery you see a lot of different names that are used to describe the same thing. Examples I have seen is brand discovery, brand strategy, kick-off call, design consultation, analysis & research, brand story questionnaire, brand questionnaire, research & strategy. And sometimes this is paired with an ideal client questionnaire.
So just to make sure we’re on the same page, this is what I mean with brand discovery;
Brand discovery is part of the client process that is used by brand and website designers to discover more about their client’s business. The answers to these questions will be used as the creative brief to create the visual brand identity, the website, the copy etc so that it will speak to the ideal client.
As you can see in the examples I have mentioned is that some designers call this process brand strategy. And it’s important to understand that there is a difference between brand discovery and brand strategy. I can get where the confusion comes from when the initial questionnaires or workbooks use similar questions or when a part of the process of brand strategy is called brand discovery.
But the difference comes from the word develop. Brand strategy is a service that is offered by a brand strategist and they will help their clients to develop the base of their business; the foundation. Whereas within brand or website design you need your clients to tell you what their strategy is.
Can you offer brand strategy as a designer? Absolutely. But in my opinion, it should be an additional service as there should be no need for development to be able to design. What I mean by this is, that the brand strategy should be there so that you can directly start with the design. If within the niche you are serving you see that a large percentage of clients do not have the development done before they come to you, you could start to offer brand strategy to them. Depending on your niche you could offer this as an additional service that they need to complete before the design can start or you can include it into your process but then you need to extend your timelines as this will take much more of your time.
So it’s really important to be as clear as possible about what is included in your packages so that you can set expectations for your clients. But also for you as the designer, that you charge accordingly when you do offer brand development so that you don’t keep giving part of your service away for free and start to resent your clients (which will probably happen when you undercharge).
What a thorough brand discovery process can do for you
So why is this brand discovery process so important? You know you need this information to design your clients brand or website. But the more detailed answers you are getting from clients you will:
- Have to make fewer concepts to present to your client because you are clearer on the direction of the business (and could even go to the one concept approach)
- Be able to present your concepts with more confidence because you have the information from the discovery process to back up your choices
- Have fewer revisions because the concepts are closer to your client’s vision
- Be able to reduce the timeline because you have to make fewer concepts and revisions
- Have a higher profit margin if you have to spend less time on a project while still charging the same
- Happier clients because the process is much smoother and the end result better
So how can you improve your brand discovery process? Let’s look at that below
Methods to use for your brand discovery process
There is not just one method you can use for your brand discovery process during your client onboarding but there are pros and cons to each of them. So let’s take a look at 3 different options.
Questionnaire
From the examples above you see that a brand discovery questionnaire is mentioned quite a few times. And from conversations that I have with clients and other designers, this is a method that is used often.
Pros of using a discovery questionnaire:
- It’s a rinse and repeat way of doing your brand discovery as you have to set it up once and use it again for each client. It’s quick to send out to clients when they are at this stage so it doesn’t take a lot of time and it is something you can automate so it takes even less time.
- When you get the questionnaire back you can go through the answers on your own and do the research that’s needed. And directly start with a moldboard or sketches afterwards. So this speeds up this part of the process
- Your client can fill this in on their own time and split it into several sessions if they want to
Cons of using a discovery questionnaire:
- With a questionnaire, you get surface-level answers. The first answer that comes to mind is the one that is written down and it might not be as detailed as you need. Leading to having to create more concepts and more revisions.
- You can’t ask for clarification you and your client might have a completely different perspective about the same answer. You’ve probably come across a client that mentioned they wanted a modern logo or website and when you created one they did not like it. This is because we all have different perceptions of things.
- Some clients don’t like this type of ‘homework’ and feel the work is being pushed towards them
Zoom Call
Another option would be to ask the same questions you have in the questionnaire on a call.
Pros of using a Zoom call in the brand discovery process:
- You can ask for clarification or ask follow up questions so that you will get more detailed information about the business and design direction your client is looking for. Leading to fewer concepts you have to create and fewer revisions.
- You’re able to connect more with your client and build a more personal relationship than when you would communicate via email
- It’s easier for your clients because they don’t have to sit down for hours to type out their answers
Cons of using a zoom call in the brand discovery process:
- It will impact your timeline in comparison to the questionnaire. Where you might give your client 3 days to fill in the questionnaire, it might take longer to find a time that works for both of you and then have the call.
- The call itself will probably take you more time, than when you would have to review the answers within a questionnaire. After the call, you will still need to do the research.
- You’re able to connect more with your client, which I know is not always what introverts like to do
Combination of a brand questionnaire and a call
Here you get the best of both worlds and mitigate most of the cons. Yes, it does take a bit more time in the beginning stages of the project to get the client to fill in the questionnaire and then to arrange and hold the call. But you can reduce the length of the questionnaire and the call can be shorter because you’re just looking to clarify.
Questions you need to ask during your brand discovery process: know their brand, goals and audience.
To be able to design the brand or website you will need to know what their brand strategy is, who they are serving, what problem they are solving for their clients, their design style and the outcome they are hoping to get from the personal brand or website design.
You can break up the questions into different topics:
About your business
- Tell me about your company like we just met
- What is the mission and vision of your business?
- What are your core values?
- What are your personal and business goals?
- What products/services are you selling? What would you like to do in the future?
- Are you running into any issues with your business?
About your audience
- Who are you serving? (demographics, psychographic etc)
- What problem are you solving for them?
- What are their external issues?
- What are their internal issues?
- What would be their objections to hiring you?
- Who don’t you want to work with?
About your niche
- What are your current competitors?
- What is a competitor you admire?
- What do you dislike about your competitors or niche? What do you want to do differently?
- How do you differentiate yourself from them?
About your current brand
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What are your current brand guidelines?
Besides this you will also need to include questions specific to brand design and website design like (and this is not an extensive list):
- What colours are you drawn to? (You could add an image with colours and the psychology of them)
- What emotion does your brand need to represent?
- What is the overall style you are looking for?
- Is there a particular style of logo you like? (You could add an image with examples of font logo’s, monograms, icons, badges etc so they can select the style)
- Is there a particular style of font’s you like? (Same here with an image of examples of serif, sans-serif etc)
- What type of website do you need? (Choice between informational website, e-commerce, membership etc)
- Have they purchased a domain name, hosting, set up their account?
- How many pages do they need?
- What is the main goal of the website?
- What is the outcome you are hoping to get from the new brand or website design?
Ways to set up your brand discovery process
There is not just one way to set up your brand discovery process but there are pros and cons to each of them.
If you are looking to reduce your expenses you could use Google Forms or Typeform for your questionnaires but this will limit how much you can automate in your business and the more you can combine with 1 or 2 systems the easier it will be to manage your client projects. So my suggestion would be to use a client management system like Dubsado or Honeybook.
One of the great parts of using a CRM like this is that you can make workflows and templates. Each questionnaire is built in a template. You just need to copy it over to the project you are working on and send the link via email. But it’s also great for your clients because they will have all things that belong to their project in their client portal, including the contract, invoices forms they already filled in or still need to or if there are new emails.
I personally use Dubsado, so that is the example I will show below.
If you would send a questionnaire this would come up in the incomplete forms box in the Dubsado Client portal. All your clients need to do is click on it and they will be taken to the form they need to fill in. If they don’t want to fill it in in one go they can save a draft and come back to it later. Once they finish they click submit and you will get a message that it is done. So no back and forth emailing of word documents.
Once your client has filled in the form you can send them an email that is automated through the workflows you can set up in Dubsado to schedule the call to discuss their answers.
Besides this initial process, as a designer, there are a lot of documents/images that need to be sent with initial concepts, adjusted logos and final ones or website mockups. So, you can use the client portal for this and send these files through Dubsado and get them signed off by your clients so that you can move on to the next phase. No more discussions if something was approved or not by the client.
And you can also integrate Dubsado with your email address. That way you can send and receive emails about the projects within the platform. No need to open your inbox.
For a more elaborate insight on Dubsado read the post on how to use Dubsado for your design clients
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT
There you have it, an overview of all the steps of the brand discovery process, the methods you can use, the ways you can set it up and the questions you need to ask.
I mentioned a lot of brand strategy-related concepts very quickly in the blog, so be sure to click the links throughout the blog if you want to learn more about those concepts.
