Brand touchpoints: What they are and why you can’t afford to silo them

A brand touchpoint refers to anytime a customer interacts with your brand. This could be speaking to an employee through email, visiting your website, or liking your social posts. The key is that when someone interacts with one of these brand touchpoints, they have a positive experience. Below, we’ll talk about everyday examples of brand touchpoints and why they’re important for business success.

What are the benefits of brand touchpoints?

Here are some of the primary advantages of optimizing brand touchpoints:

• It promotes good online reviews
• You find areas of neglect
• It generates more sales

1. It promotes good online reviews

Research shows that 93% of customers will look at your company reviews before buying from your business. This makes quality online reviews the foundation of social credibility. If your touchpoints are positive and customers had a good experience interacting with your brand, they’ll tell friends and family and post a review online. So if you’re a new business trying to gain traction or are already established but looking to generate more good reviews, optimizing brand touchpoints is a must.

2. You find areas of neglect

When we think of brand touchpoints, we think about online customer experiences like social media ads, blog posts, and videos. But there’s so much more to brand touchpoints than digital marketing. Brand touchpoints range from word of mouth to online reviews and the experience customers have at your physical store. For example, if you don’t have dedicated parking for customers, they might have to park three streets away and walk in the rain to visit your store.

So if you can analyze all brand touchpoints —even ones that people don’t usually think of— you can identify weaknesses and improve the customer experience.

3. It generates more sales

The ultimate benefit of analyzing and improving brand touchpoints is an increase in profit. When everyone has a positive experience with your brand, they’ll tell friends and family. This word of mouth builds credibility within your industry. Increased sales also come from a better understanding of customer data. For example, if you’re measuring the success of multiple touchpoints, you’ll learn about customers’ preferences and what they’re looking for when interacting with your brand.

Brand touchpoints: A tangible example

Let’s say you own a restaurant. You spend hours a day and thousands of dollars on the most personalized and relevant marketing campaigns. You also focus on creating flashy menus and hiring the best chefs and waiters. Your restaurant is beautiful and makes customers want to stay there for hours.

But what if a customer had a poor booking experience? Maybe the receptionist was having a bad day and was rude on the phone, or the customer had to wait for ages to speak to someone about making a reservation. These are all brand touchpoint examples, and you’re judged off your worst touchpoint —not your best.

What are the 5 most common brand touchpoints?

These are the five most common brand touchpoints to focus on:

Social media

The most apparent brand touchpoint is social media ads and content. You allow customers to interact with your brand when you run ads on Facebook or Instagram. If this touchpoint is positive and customers don’t know about your brand, it’ll encourage them to research your product or service and make a purchase.

SEO

SEO is another example of a brand touchpoint. If you’re investing in SEO and are ranking on the first page of Google, customers will click on your website when searching for a keyword. If your content answers all their questions and offers advice, they’ll remember your authority, creating a positive touchpoint.

Video content

Videos on platforms like YouTube and TikTok are currently the most consumed form of media. This means that hooking your audience’s attention and providing value within the first few seconds of a video is critical for positive brand touchpoints.

Chatbots

It’s almost impossible to answer all your audience’s questions on the homepage of your website. This is where chatbots can help. It uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to answer customer questions within seconds. The only problem is that not all software is accurate. So using effective chatbots is critical for creating a positive touchpoint with your website.

Your physical store (if you have one)

If you have a physical store, it’ll be the most critical business touchpoint of all. If customers have a bad experience shopping at your brick-and-mortar location, they’ll run to the competition and may also post bad reviews online. This will turn away new customers who are researching your company. So, always ensure that employees are friendly, your stores are clean, and you always have sufficient stock.

Meaningfully connect with your customers — with Lytics

Optimizing touchpoints is quite straightforward and the first step is collecting customer data like behaviors and preferences and using a customer data platform to clean, transform, and structure this data. With the Lytics CDP, you gain a 360-degree view of customer profiles, so you can optimize brand touchpoints around customer needs.