Discovery for new market opportunities – three things every project plan should cover

So, you want to launch something new. Perhaps it’s an entirely new product. Or maybe it’s an existing product you're hoping to develop and reach a new audience with. Either way, you’re at the beginning of this, so you’re not entirely sure what this new thing needs to be, or do, or how to go about it.

You need a discovery phase. A phase of exploratory, generative work that will help you understand the opportunity space, and frame the issues or ‘problems’ you need to address to get there.

But, how should you start? Here are three things I think every discovery phase should cover, with a range of methods to suit different budgets and starting points.

One: the audience

Firstly, who are your audience (your users, or customers, if you prefer those terms)? What do you know about them? What demographics can you use to describe them? What attitudes do they hold towards your product or products like yours? What motivates them to act, and what frustrations do they experience when they do?

Getting clear on this at the beginning of an innovation/NPD project will help you design specifically for that audience, and make sure your new thing serves a real customer or user need.

You might already have the answers to these questions sitting in internal reports, in which case a review of existing research may be enough for you to move forward. Alternatively, you may have access to an archive of internal customer data that you can draw on to start to answer the above. If not (or even to better understand the data you do have) consider doing some primary research in the form of surveys, interviews, observations, or a combination of all three.

Consumer Panel Survey

Budget: £££

When to use and when not to use this method

You may decide to run a quantitative consumer survey using a panel provider. Panels give you ‘on-tap’ access to a pre-recruited, profiled sample of respondents. These kinds of surveys are useful when you need to put numbers behind your decision-making. They can tell you who your prospective audience is and how many share certain characteristics and attitudes.

However, although they can tell you what they think, they are less suited to explaining why they think it. If you need to understand the ‘why’ behind consumer behaviour and attitudes, qualitative methods like interviews are better. You should also avoid this method if your target audience is niche or not represented in standard panels.

Other Considerations

Recruitment is handled by the panel provider. This means that turnaround can be fast and sample sizes are typically guaranteed. However, you’ll need to factor panel provider fees into your budget which vary depending on the sample profile, respondent quota, and survey length. This pricing calculator from YouGov can give you an idea of the costs.

Customer Survey

Budget: £

When to use and when not to use this method

Sending a customer survey to an internal list is a great option if you have an existing customer base and want to identify issues or gaps in the current experience before designing something new. Survey analysis will ground innovation and new product development in customer sentiment rather than assumption.

This method is less useful if you're targeting non-customers or a completely new market.

Other Considerations

You’ll need access to a customer list and a way to contact them, but assuming you have that costs will be much lower than a panel survey as you only need to account for design, programming and analysis time, plus a participation incentive (i.e. entry into a prize draw). Response rates can be low, which will affect the sample. You may want to bolster results with other research methods and data sources.

Customer interviews

Budget: ££

When to use and when not to use this method

Customer interviews are structured but flexible one-to-one conversations designed to surface the 'why' behind customer or user behaviour. Use them early in a project when you need to understand problems deeply or explore unfamiliar territory.

These are useful in most discovery projects, both as stand-alone and follow-up methods. The main reason not to use them is if time or budget is very tight. That said, as little as 3-5 interviews will surface patterns.

Other Considerations

Recruitment can take time, especially for hard-to-reach audiences. You’ll also need to budget for an incentive per interview (anywhere from £25 - £100+), and will need to gain consent for any recording and data use.

Observation

Budget: ££ - £££

When to use and when not to use this method

Observing your audience in their natural environment (e.g. at home, in store, at work) will help you understand real behaviour, over reported behaviour. People don’t always do what they say they do, so observation can fill the gap between claimed and actual behaviours.

Use this method when you need to uncover workarounds, underlying needs, or the environmental context that an interview would miss. This method is particularly useful when paired with interviews as part of a contextual inquiry. It’s not appropriate when the behaviours you want to understand are infrequent, private, or if your budget is tight.

Other considerations

Takes time to plan, conduct, and analyse the data. Requires researcher skill to observe without influencing behaviour. You’ll need to have ethical sign-off and consent processes in place.

Two: the market

Now that you’ve planned how you’ll conduct research with the target audience for your new opportunity, you need to get an idea of the competition. What else exists in the marketplace? What might your audience choose over your product or service? What are other brands/organisations doing that you aren’t? Are they providing a similar service for less? Is their product better in some way? And how can yours stand out?

Gaining an overview of the competitive landscape your new product will exist in, helps you to define what ‘good’ looks like, and identify any whitespace in the market that you could take advantage of.

As with audience research, you might already have the answers to these questions sitting in internal reports. Often companies invest in trend and industry reports that make a good starting point for market research. For a deeper understanding, and to ensure your new product or service is competitive or truly unique, consider the following methods.

Expert interviews

Budget: ££

When to use and when not to use this method

Talk to the experts! Run a series of semi-structured one-to-one conversations with people who can provide informed perspectives on industry trends, constraints and opportunities.

Use this method to rapidly build knowledge in an unfamiliar domain, understand future trends, or stress-test assumptions with someone who has deep context. It’s useful in regulated or technically complex sectors, but less relevant if your team already has strong domain expertise.

Other considerations

Identifying and recruiting the right experts can be time consuming and you may want to use a specialist recruitment agency to help with this. As the profile and information you're after is niche, incentives are typically higher than customer interviews (allow £100+ p.p).

Desk-based competitor research

Budget: £

When to use and when not to use this method

A structured review of competitor products, services, touchpoints, and/or positioning using publicly available sources is a low-cost, high value starting point for any innovation project and should almost always be done.

This compare and contrast activity helps us understand the landscape a product exists in. It creates an understanding of what 'good' looks like, and where whitespace exists. It’s useful when entering a market, planning a major feature, or repositioning. However, if you already have a clear and current view of the competitive landscape additional research may not be necessary.

Other considerations

If using free/publicly available sources, then the main consideration is time. Clearly define what you plan to look at up-front to avoid scope creep. Choose an appropriate framework to structure your analysis.

Some of our go-to frameworks include:

Established design principles from the field of interaction design. The 10 principles include things like ‘visibility of system status’, ‘match between the system and the real world’, and ‘user freedom and control’.
Use this to analyse the user interfaces of digital products/services and to benchmark competitors.
An analysis scheme created by Harvard Business School professor, Michael Porter. The five forces are competition, the threat of new entrants to the industry, supplier bargaining power, customer bargaining power, and the ability of customers to find product substitutes. Together these define the overall competitiveness of the market.
Use this to analyse the market landscape as a whole.
This framework expands on the traditional marketing mix or 4 Ps model (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) and adds three categories that are relevant to service-based and modern digital businesses (People, Process, Physical evidence).
Use this to perform a competitive audit of your rival’s marketing strategies

Three: the organisation

The third factor that will be vital in the success of any product or service you intend to launch is the conditions within the client organisation itself. This is particularly important for agencies, consultants, and other third parties to understand, but internal teams should ask these questions too.

What motivations or barriers exist within the organisation itself? Are there any bottlenecks in delivery? Are there any pre-existing assumptions we need to challenge? Is there any existing research we can make use of? Do client teams share the same vision or definition of success?

I’ve listed this last, but it’s actually where your discovery project should start. For any new market opportunity to be a success you need to uncover assumptions and align teams as early in the process as you can. Here are the methods I’d use to go about this.

Kick-off workshop

Budget: £

When to use and when not to use this method

Host a kick-off workshop with internal stakeholders. This is a facilitated session with members of the core project team to align on objectives, signpost or share existing knowledge, surface any assumptions, and agree on ways of working. This is essential at the start of every project – set aside 2 hours. It creates shared understanding, surfaces internal knowledge that might otherwise stay siloed, and builds team cohesion. Skipping it often leads to misalignment later.

Other considerations

You’ll need a clear agenda and a skilled facilitator. It requires a time investment from senior stakeholders so ensure you secure this ahead of time. Factor in time to plan the session and any venue or materials costs if hosting in-person.

Stakeholder interviews

Budget: £-££

When to use and when not to use this method

Run a series of one-to-one or small-group conversations with internal stakeholders (e.g. business leads, commercial teams, operations, etc) to understand organisational constraints, existing knowledge, strategic priorities, and internal hypotheses.

Do this at the very start of a project to avoid duplicating research already done internally, to understand what success looks like for different parts of the business, and to secure early buy-in. Without speaking to stakeholders across the business you risk producing findings that don't land.

This is a valuable activity in any project, but can add a chunk of time to a project timeline so if your timescales are particularly tight you can either scale these back or make do with a kick-off session.

Other considerations

These are relatively low-cost as they’re internal conversations, so avoid recruitment and incentive costs. The challenge (and the part that extends project timelines) is scheduling time with busy, senior people.

Closing thoughts

This triad of audience, market, and organisation ensures that the new products/services you design are fit for purpose, stand out from the crowd, and can be successfully implemented by your team. Exactly how you go about this will vary from project to project, but make sure you hit all three.

Here’s a summary of the methods I’ve covered in the article.

Can give you reliable quant data about your target audience but won’t tell you the ‘why’ behind audience behaviour.
£££
Good for gathering data on attitudes to existing products and services but can have low response rates.
£
Surfaces the ‘why’ behind behaviour. Can help you understand problems or explore new territory. Recruitment can take time esp. For niche audiences.
££
Fills the gap between claimed and actual behaviours - because people don’t always do what they say they do. It takes time to set up and a skilled researcher to do it well.
££ - £££
Helps you rapidly build knowledge in an unfamiliar domain. Useful in regulated or complex industries. Recruitment can take time and incentives are higher than they are in customer interviews.
££
A low-cost, high value starting point that you should almost always do. Creates an understanding of what 'good' looks like, and where whitespace exists.
£
Essential at the start of any project. Creates shared understanding, surfaces internal knowledge and builds team cohesion.
£
Helps you understand what success looks like to different parts of the business and can surface barriers. Scheduling can be an issue - get them booked in asap.
£ - ££

Now you know what to do. But how much should you do? My next article, “How Much Research is Enough” will cover just that. Stay tuned!