What are marketing touchpoints?

Also known as brand touchpoints, the definition of a marketing touchpoint is simple - it’s any form of contact or interaction that a potential or current customer may have with your brand.

Although easy to define, tracking your marketing touchpoints can be more challenging in practice. Why? Because in today’s world, with the ever-growing world of social media and online shopping, there are now more marketing touchpoints than ever before.

From your brick-and-mortar store to your website, social media and online reviews, there are so many ways a customer can learn about and interact with your brand. Tracing and defining these touchpoints can help you to understand your customers, spot any issues and improve the customer experience, which can boost customer retention and turn new leads into loyal clients.

What categories can you sort them into?

There are a variety of ways a customer can make contact with your business. These can be both physical touchpoints and online touchpoints, such as:

• The design of your storefront and signage
• Word of mouth and online reviews
• Influencers and social media
• Adverts and marketing campaigns
• Catalogue and marketing emails
• Your website
• Communications including phone, your online help centre, live chat and emails
• Newsletters and offers
• Billing and follow-up emails

These marketing touchpoints are often categorised as pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase. For example, a customer is most likely to look at reviews prior to purchasing, will likely spend the most time on your website while buying and will receive ongoing communications after purchasing.

Additionally, you can further map the customer journey into four key stages:

Awareness

The first category is brand awareness. This is the earliest part of the customer journey when a potential lead first learns about your brand. There are numerous marketing touchpoints that can come into play here, from your social media ads and marketing campaigns to blogs and testimonials.

During this stage, a potential customer may be searching for answers to a problem, looking for a particular type of product, or simply browsing through their social media accounts,

Consideration

This is the stage where a lead is considering buying your products. It’s at this stage that a customer is most likely to research your brand and try to learn more about your products and services.

This is where reviews and information sections are important. Buyers may want to learn about the customer experiences of other shoppers and find out about your delivery options and returns process.

Decision

Now it’s time to convert a lead into a customer by purchasing your products or services. Depending on your business operations, this may occur in your brick-and-mortar store or online.

Marketing touchpoints may include your physical shop, your website and your social media. Additionally, the layout and usability of your website are key.

Evangelism

This is the point at which a one-off purchase turns into a loyal, repeat customer. At this stage, a customer may consider a huge range of factors, from the ease of checkout to the quality of your products.

However, to encourage repeat customers, there are a number of marketing touchpoints you can utilise. This includes customer rewards and loyalty programmes, an ongoing email marketing campaign, and engaging online content.

Reporting on marketing touchpoints

Reviewing and analysing your marketing touchpoints can help you to better understand your customers and how they interact with your brand. For example, if your data reveals that one particular marketing channel is more effective, you can use this information to learn why this channel is driving conversions and use your findings to make improvements elsewhere.

Knowing more about how your customers interact with your brand is essential to boosting conversion rates. Essentially, knowing and reporting on your marketing touchpoints can help you to invest in more effective strategies and ensure you promote the right messages to the right people at the optimal time.

While this can be a time-consuming process, there are tools that can assist. Here at Apteco, we offer a range of ground-breaking software solutions that can help you to track and harness your data, providing you with the insights required to give your communications the edge.