Touchpoints play a vital role in the marketing strategy of any business. Properly leveraged, they’re the key to taking a customer from the initial awareness stage all the way through to conversion. When you get touchpoints right, you can create customers who are more than loyal. They’re obsessed with your brand and what you offer.
Let’s take a look at exactly what constitutes a touchpoint and how to use them to your marketing advantage.
What Exactly is a Touchpoint?
A touchpoint is a point of contact between you and your existing or potential customers. Any interaction you have with them counts as a touchpoint. Touchpoints exist both in the real world and the digital space and can be as diverse as mailers, phone calls, conference booths, emails, billboards, product packaging, blogs, and social media posts.
Together these touchpoints help current and prospective clients to build an overall sentiment about your brand. Done well, they can create a positive experience, which in turn drives the likelihood of conversion.
Using Touchpoints to your Advantage
Touchpoints apply throughout the entire customer journey. When creating your touchpoints, you’ll want to consider what the customer needs at each point in the journey, and how your touchpoints will respond to those needs. For example, what do they need to know prior to purchase, when making a purchase, and once they’ve made a purchase?
Not all customers are ready to buy just yet, which means that you’ll need to pace your touchpoints accordingly. Awareness matters, but no one wants to feel like they’re being stalked by a brand.
How Many Touchpoints do you Need?
Touchpoints work like TV advertising: saturation is key. Generally, it takes about 6-8 touchpoints to take someone from awareness through to readiness to convert. That’s because it takes a lot of interactions to gather the information needed to know whether someone is ready to buy.
Typically, the first few touchpoints make your customer aware of your product, at which point they might be ready to ask for more information. It usually takes a few more touches to be able to earmark them as a qualified lead. After that is where the magic happens – the sale gets closed, and you can work on making a new customer a happy customer.
Why so many touches? It’s a matter of balancing your own resources with the needs of the customer. They don’t want to be given the hard-sell from an unfamiliar brand, and you don’t want to be wasting valuable resources on a prospect who may not convert.
By nurturing your customers through your buying journey via target touchpoints, you can drive buyer readiness and action.
From Customer Satisfaction to Customer Obsession
Customer satisfaction is enough to make a sale, and maybe a repeat sale. Customer obsession, on the other hand, is where the real success is. Brands that go above and beyond with their touchpoints deliver an experience that engenders loyalty in their customers, dramatically increasing the likelihood of repeat purchases.
Incredible customer service, award-worthy ads, stunning packaging and content that truly meets a customer’s needs are what it takes to make the leap from satisfaction to obsession. You’re still working with the same touchpoints. You’re just doing it on a level that others struggle to achieve.
Brands that strive for customer obsession understand that their brand is more than a product: it’s an experience. A finely tuned customer journey supported by unforgettable touchpoints will deliver a brand experience that transforms initial interest into lasting, unwavering brand obsession – so it’s worth taking the time to get yours right.
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