Touchpoints
A touchpoint is any time a user interacts with your company, brand or organization. The term touchpoint comes up primarily when going down the customer journey. A consumer/user can interact with your company in a variety of ways. You can think of the following types of channels: a website, social media platforms or cross-selling websites. Basically, touch points are exactly what the customer journey consists of, as the customer journey talks about the ways in which a customer ends up with your company.
Optimizing touch points
It is possible to optimize touchpoints so that they deliver more. At a touchpoint, a company communicates information or advertising to potential customers. The purpose of this is to persuade these potential customers to make a purchase. For this reason, it is extremely crucial to create a positive experience when a consumer arrives at a touchpoint. A touchpoint is supposed to complete the following stages of the decision-making/purchasing process:
- Recognizing the problem the potential customer is experiencing
- Providing information the potential customer is looking for
- Providing an (alternative) solution
- Promote the moment the potential customer decides to make a purchase
- Motivate customer behavior after a purchase to remain a customer
A touchpoint can influence these moments in a positive or negative way. This depends entirely on how you as a company deploy these touchpoints.
How many touchpoints are enough?
When determining touch points, the quantity of touch points is important. The idea that more is better is not the case here. Too many touchpoints can be counterproductive to consumer behavior. There should be a good balance between offline and online touchpoints and their quantity.
Offline touchpoints are physical stores, the location of premises and how the product/service is presented. But other offline touchpoints that are very popular in traditional media are flyers, newspapers, posters and packaging. With online touchpoints, it is much easier to measure where the customer is coming from than with offline points. Some examples of popular online touchpoints are Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, E-mail, blogs and newsletters. Depending on the type of business, you can look at whether online, offline or a mix of both touchpoints is the best fit.
