A growing number of companies rely on Touchpoint Management in marketing. We explain to you what Touchpoint Marketing and how to use it as an innovative and resource-oriented marketing tool.
What is a Touchpoint?
Before we jump to the question of what Touchpoint Management is, we first need to define the term Touchpoint. The term Touchpoint belongs to marketing and describes places or situations where a person comes into contact with a company's products, brands or services. These Touchpoints are also called Points of Contacts (PoC) and they are particularly important for the customer journey. In marketing, controllable Touchpoints differ from non-controllable Touchpoints.
Controllable Touchpoints
Controllable Touchpoints are all those Touchpoints on which the company has influence. Classic examples for Point of Contacts are advertising (print, TV, radio, but also online), email marketing, together with SEO, trade fairs and events as well as the presentation at the Point of Sale (PoS). These Touchpoints are controllable because the respective company itself decides where and how the contact point with the customer will be established.
Non-controllable Touchpoints
Touchpoints that cannot be controlled are, for example, word of mouth, comments in social media, forums, blogs and rating platforms. Be sure not to lose sight of these non-controllable Touchpoints. Nothing is worse than a customer encountering a shit storm on a social media channel, for example.
What is Customer Touchpoint Management?
Now that we have defined Touchpoint, we can clarify what Touchpoint Management is. Customer Touchpoint Management is therefore the controlled coordination of (marketing) measures in order to offer the customer or target group a positive experience at one or more contact points.
In order for the successful management of marketing activities, a Touchpoint analysis is an absolute must beforehand. Touchpoint Analysis is used to analyze and evaluate not only the customer journey (= buying process), but also the customer experience (= user experience) in your company.
How does Touchpoint Management work?
Once you have clearly distinguished your customer groups, you can define and analyze your company's customer journey and related customer Touchpoints for each customer group, and then optimize the buying process and user experience. Practically speaking, the Management of Touchpoints therefore occurs in four steps:
- Status quo analysis
- Target Strategy
- Implementation
- Monitoring
Step 1: Status quo analysis of the customer Touchpoints along the customer journey
Certainly, there are different ways to depict the purchase process and the user experience. But usually the customer's path is divided into five stages, in which the customer has various Touchpoints with your company. These five stages are:
- Getting to know each other (controllable or non-controllable Touchpoints)
- Contemplate (controllable Touchpoints)
- Purchase (controllable Touchpoints)
- Benefits (controllable Touchpoints)
- Recommendation (non-controllable Touchpoints)
Use the Touchpoint Analysis to systematically record the customer's contact points from the customer's perspective and to document the current situation at this contact point. Ask yourself the questions where along the respective customer journey your customer currently has contact points to your company or product, how much resources you put into the specific contact point and how effectively the contact point functions from the customer's perspective.
Step 2: Definition of the suitable target strategy
After you have analyzed the status quo, plan the ideal condition for each Point of Contact - create a target strategy for your company. Imagine what the ideal customer touchpoint for your brand should look like and how much resources you want to invest in this vision. Collect your ideas on how to reach the ideal condition and derive a strategy for implementation.
Step 3: Implementation of the target strategy
After you have analyzed and evaluated the current status and defined your target status along the purchase process, you now move on to implementation. For example, involve your employees in marketing activities or look for partners to support you in the successful implementation of digital Touchpoints. In the field of digital marketing, but also in Touchpoint analysis, we at promio.net are happy to support you.
Step 4: Monitoring marketing actions
Monitor your customer Touchpoint management. Measure Touchpoint-specific KPIs, such as click-through rates, organic page impressions or customer ratings. If you notice that a touchpoint lacks customer specificity or that the Touchpoint attracts negative attention, adjust your strategy and the activities based on it. Touchpoint Management is endless, because there are always new ways to improve the customer journey or customer experience.
What goals does Touchpoint Management pursue?
The only remaining question is: What are the benefits of Touchpoint Management? Simply put - satisfied customers. Apart from satisfied customers, Touchpoint Management supports you in optimizing the processes throughout the customer journey. With the help of Customer Touchpoint Management, among others, the following objectives can be achieved:
- Expansion of coverage and brand awareness
- Increase of re- and new buyers
- Strengthening customer loyalty
- Increase of the recommendation rate
- Reduction of unsatisfied customers
- Increase of competitiveness
- Increase of the Return of Investment
While you may not always reach all goals immediately, as mentioned above: Touchpoint Management is not a finite task, but a constant challenge for companies.
