One of the proven methods to great marketing – and actually converting that marketing to sales – is touchpoints. Fair warning, we’re going to get nerdy in this one.
As consumer behavior becomes more measurable thanks to those trackable cookies (the kind online, not freshly baked), marketing gets more defined and scientific. These days, you can actually predict how your target audience will interact with your marketing and make data-backed decisions to set it up well right from the start. This is how professional marketers approach planning, strategy and campaigns, and why it’s worth leaning on this kind of knowledge as your business grows.
Concepts like touchpoints are what will take your marketing from simple to superior.
What are touchpoints? A touchpoint is any interaction with your business. It can be anything from a social media post someone sees to making a purchase on your website. Any time your business comes across someone’s radar is a touchpoint.
Why are touchpoints important to your business sales? By the time your audience member becomes aware of your brand, warms up to purchasing, becomes a customer, then a repeat customer, they’ve likely had dozens or even hundreds of touchpoint interactions along the way. The frequency and quality of these interactions play a massive role in your business growth, which is why they deserve special attention.
Touchpoints are usually a sales and marketing focus, but it’s also important to make sure every consumer interaction with your brand or business is going to leave that person with a positive impression, because the quality of their overall experience is what will diminish or catapult your business, and solid marketing isn’t the only piece of the experience pie. This is why I advise looking into customer service and product quality when a client is struggling with sales. Marketing often takes the blame for poor performance that can be more of an issue elsewhere with the business. But, I digress. Back to touchpoints.
While touchpoints do go beyond marketing and sales alone, we’re going to stick with their role in successful marketing since, well, we’re a marketing agency. When we set up a moderate to aggressive marketing campaign, we’re going to keep this touchpoints rule of thumb in mind:
How many touchpoints does a potential customer need to convert to customer? While this can vary across industry and company, digital marketers tend to aim for around 7 touchpoints within a 14 day window. When applied alongside a solid customer journey and good marketing principles like content best practices and excellent platform use, a professional marketer can hone this number as audiences respond. As marketing campaigns are initially being built, however, it’s good to use the 7 touchpoints in 14 days rule of thumb to make sure an audience member is given a fair shot at warming up to a purchase. And, honestly, to give your marketing a fair shot at performing to its best potential.
Cool, so what exactly does this look like? Here’s a basic approach I would take to touchpoints with a client’s marketing. Let’s assume the client has three primary marketing tactics based on our planning sessions where we pick the best methods based on their product type, sales goals and audiences. We’ve decided to primarily utilize email marketing, Facebook ads and organic Instagram for the next six months.
14 Day Timeframe (organic marketing)
Day 1 – Send email
Day 3 – Post on Instagram
Day 5 – Send email
Day 7 – Post on Instagram
Day 10 – Post on Instagram
Day 13 – Send email
Day 14 – Post on Instagram
These organic content marketing methods are carrying the baseline of the 7 touchpoints in this 14 day timeframe. Since the Facebook ads will be running in conjunction, but are less predictable as to when and how they’ll appear to the audience, I’m going to make sure the ads are set up for optimal targeting to the right audience and aim for a frequency of at least 1-2x shown across these 14 days to my well defined audience. If the ads are set up right, this is what will hopefully happen.
14 Day Timeframe (organic + paid ads)
Day 1 – Send email
Day 3 – Post on Instagram
Day 3 – Facebook ad pops up
Day 5 – Send email
Day 7 – Post on Instagram
Day 8 – Facebook ad pops up
Day 10 – Post on Instagram
Day 13 – Send email
Day 14 – Post on Instagram
Thanks to the Facebook ads, I’ve achieved 9 touchpoints getting in front of my audience member in these 14 days. This helps reinforce the organic material, making sure there are more than enough opportunities for your business to interact with the right person.
How do I know the consumer is actually seeing and interacting with these touchpoints? This goes back to following best practices with each marketing method. I can’t just willy-nilly send emails to fill in the quota. Those emails need to have strong subject lines, interesting content and timed according to optimal sending based on data so far.
When I create Instagram posts for a client, I’m going to post at optimal engagement times (again, based on the data we can study so far), use strategically developed hashtag groupings and make a post that is likely to get good interaction.
Of course, if you’re nervous about your audience missing these touchpoints, you can always increase the amount to increase the odds, but if you’re following best practices across these marketing methods, you should achieve very good results.
Want to know if your business marketing is following the touchpoints rule and how you can improve this area of your marketing? Book a consultation with us or, better yet, give your marketing the full audit – which includes a touchpoints grade – to find all the strengths and weaknesses of what you’ve been doing so far and get professional recommendations from us before you continue with marketing that isn’t getting your business actual sales.
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