When you’re in the business, you understand everything you do. You get what makes your products and services work as well as they do. You have passion for what you have to offer.
Your prospects don’t. They zip in and out, picking up pieces of your message as they hunt and search for information. While something might make sense to you, your customers may see it in an entirely different way. This isn’t about you—it’s about what your prospects and customers see, think, and feel.
To fully capture the attention of those who can do business with you requires you as a marketer to dig deep and discover their “pain” points. These are customer touch points where you can provide just the right amount of information to move them along in their journey. Do it right, and you may just have a customer for life.
What Are Customer Touch Points?
Pull back and look at your business through the eyes of a customer. Customer touch points are those areas where you reach out and connect with a customer in some way. It can be a traditional or digital marketing piece, an in-store interaction, a phone conversation, a follow-up email, a third-party review, or an article in a magazine.
Customer touch points are what build your brand and create a clear message to anyone who enters and chooses to follow the journey. They range from the initial contact, where a person first becomes aware of who you are, to the follow-up you provide long after the sale has been made.
These touch points significantly influence customer behavior. How each touch point reaches out to a customer is what forms good or bad impressions. While some of these may occur naturally without much thought, the more time you put into developing these interactions, the more connections you’ll develop with your prospects and customers.
Why Are Customer Touch Points Important?
When you’re in business, your ultimate goal is customer satisfaction. If the customer is happy, you’re happy.
This is about moving from buyers to fans. It’s about creating the best experience possible. The more someone enjoys the experience, the more likely they are to share their thoughts, and that can mean more business for you.
Finding Your Customer Touch Points
Before you create different marketing tools, it’s important to understand where each individual connection is made. Where are you most likely to connect with prospects and customers?
Before the sale:
- Google search
- Social media site
- A testimonial or a referral
- A review or comparison
- Community outreach
- Advertising/marketing campaigns
- Word of mouth
During the sale:
- A website
- A store or office
- Catalog
- Promotional campaign
- Face-to-face with a staff member
- On the phone
After the sale:
- Billing
- Customer support
- Online help center
- Newsletters
- Additional marketing campaigns
- Follow-up
- Thank you cards and gifts
These are starting points. Your business may differ based on your offers. To fully understand where your touch points are, you can do an extensive analysis to discover the best places to reach out and connect with your audience.
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Let’s look at some examples.
Before the Sale
This is the awareness stage. This is when you first connect with your prospects. First impressions are everything, which is why this is often where marketers start.
Start by creating a brand that can be recognized no matter where you advertise. Your colors, style, copy, and personality should shine through in everything you create. A study by Gartner suggested that by 2025, 80 percent of B2B sales interaction between suppliers and buyers would occur digitally. And 33 percent of all buyers preferred a seller-free sales experience. If you relied on one-to-one face time before, this might be a time to build your online presence. People are proficient in doing their own research first, and if you’re not where they are looking, you might miss out on the opportunity.
Search engines can be used to target the right keywords. Social media can be used to build authenticity into your interactions with prospects. Video can build on your strengths and show your personality.
Don’t forget about your website, which is perhaps one of the most important pieces on the customer journey. This should be the epicenter of your brand, providing everything you need to interact and engage with your prospects as you push toward the sale.
During the Sale
At the decision stage, your prospect will go through a variety of challenges. Maybe they have questions. Maybe they need support. As they dig deeper into the process, ensure they have the support they need to move to the next step. That doesn’t always mean human support—would a FAQ section provide them with the information they need to move forward?
Too often, marketers get stuck in their own communication to see what’s missing from the process. This isn’t about what you need; it’s about what a prospect wants. If you have a FAQ section, would adding video support make it better? Would an “also recommends” feature create upsells in your shopping cart?
Take the time to truly see your sales process through the eyes of a prospect. It can help you develop a stronger strategy for the process.
After the Sale
Customer touch points never cease after the sale. Yet that’s where many businesses fail. Given that it’s far more expensive to acquire new prospects than it is to keep existing customers happy, building out your touch points will increase your ROI.
You can start by checking in a short time after the sale to ensure your customer likes your product. Surveys can be a great tool to get inside a customer’s mind to find out where your weaknesses are.
Don’t forget that existing customers will buy again or refer you to family and friends as the needs arise. It’s up to you to stay fresh and current in their minds.
Optimizing Customer Touch Points
If you want a robust and loyal customer base, it starts by optimizing your customer touch points. The customer journey will determine how successful you will be throughout the life of your business.
Whether you have processes already in place or need some help fleshing them out, we’re here to help you define and create successful digital marketing strategies.
How can we help you grow your business?
