The Secret to New Business: Customer Touchpoints

While we’re busy trying to grow our business, we often miss the most obvious or important element.  Is your potential customer feeling positive and confident about doing business with you? Now more than ever, brands today must go beyond traditional thinking and marketing. A major part of this strategy is optimizing the customer experience. At every touchpoint, at every purchase, and every moment of your brand’s existence.

So, what exactly is a touchpoint?

A brand touchpoint is any point of interaction or exposure your customer has with your brand. These touchpoints are often designed by the brand in order to engage their customers, giving them the best brand experience they could possibly have.

Think about it this way. You own a fence company. Your customers find you through a number of ways – A billboard near town, brochures at the hardware store, ads on Facebook and Google. When a customers schedules a fence install consult on your website, they get thank you screen followed by a thank you Email. Then, someone calls them from your company – possibly you. On the day of the install, your graphically pleasing truck shows up and you continue the personalization and put them at ease with the process. After the job is complete, you give them a thank you kit with a branded promo item and a referral card that offers something in return for another completed job.

Within that scenario, there were over half a dozen brand touchpoints. The brand interactions that can turn a two-dimensional brand into a multi-faceted experiential one.

Examples of touchpoints

Touchpoints come in many forms —from advertising to direct marketing to live events. Common examples include TV and internet ads, direct mail, email, business cards, brochures, events and tradeshows, and media stories. Touchpoints are also important when it comes to your brick-and-mortar shop. Within a store, everything from the decals on the front window to your staff’s uniform (and attitude) to your packaging is considered a touchpoint. But don’t forget that word-of-mouth recommendations are also touchpoints that can impact your brand’s credibility and loyalty.

Why customer experience matters

This is where many fall short. Think of your customer experience as the bread and butter of your marketing strategy. After all, if you don’t have customers it’s only a matter of time before your business fades away. The fast-paced digital world only increases the need for an positive customer experience. Your customers are more savvy than you think. They’re keeping tabs on changes in trends and technology, so it is your job to make sure that when the world changes, we move with it.

Another goal to customer experience is standing apart from the competition. Recent statistics show that 89% of companies compete based on customer experience alone. Yet of the 80% of companies believing they deliver a “super experience,” only (wait for it!) 8% of customers agreed. That’s a major wake up call and reason more than ever to work on your customer experience now and from every touchpoint.

Optimize the experience

CRM – Customer relationship management

This is the core of making sure the experience is outstanding. Having a system or software in place helps to ensure that, at each brand touchpoint, your brand can deliver personalized experiences that drive brand loyalty and increase revenue. To accomplish this, your brand can and should utilize consumer research, marketing technologies and techniques, and customer data to manage the customer experience.

The digital experience

In a smartphone era, your first touch point after an ad on Google, Facebook or Instagram is your website. Is it the best experience it can be? We recently made a change to a client’s website that made a big difference. After someone fills out a form to get an appointment or more details, they’re shown a thank you page. This is pretty common. But we took it a step further by adding a 20-second thank you video from the owner saying that “he looks forward to meeting them.” Simple, effective and it’s increased the number of appointments booked. Why? Because the potential customer was given another touchpoint. By adding that simple video, they feel like they know the owner and his business even before they meet him.

Let’s take inventory

Now would be a good time to take inventory of every touch point for your business. Dig deep – it’s easy to miss one. Then, think of ways you can add a valuable touchpoint. As a marketing company, we can implement many different touchpoint for the people we work with – right down to promotional items.

Optimizing your customer experience takes consistency, time, and keeping up with changes in trends and technologies. To effectively compete today, your brand has to be willing to engage your customers through many different platforms and experiences.

Here’s the bottom line: Keep it memorable and they’ll keep coming back. And keep telling friends.

Remember: Keep it dynamic and make it memorable.

If you would like a free marketing evaluation to see if your touchpoints are on target, please connect with the marketing experts at Harper. Contact us today to get the conversation started!

About the Author: Steve Harper

Radio/TV and media personality Steve Harper leads Harper Marketing – a premier, full service marketing agency on Long Island, NY.  Harper Marketing specializes in digital and traditional marketing for businesses of all sizes.