How to boost sales with touch points

When customers come in to your business, they are intending to convert their perceptions of your business into purchases. These pre-existing intentions are formed through earlier touch point experiences. Touch points help to boost your sales and generate positive sentiment around your business. Offering your customers touch points across multiple channels gives you more chance to make contact with people. When planning marketing touch points, focus your attention on creating some that are most relevant in forming and maintaining customer relationships with your business.

Touch Point Objectives

Touch points are every encounter a customer has (or could have) with your business and brand. These encounters could be anything from sales calls, a website, TV ads, your Facebook page, packaging, in-store service or check-out, a phone call with a sales agent and more. Every business has communication objectives they look to achieve through having effective communication with their consumers through persuasion, influencing your brand voice and personality. Touch points

• create a positive feeling towards your brand

• can drive up your sales

• enable you to deliver your brand messages

• increase consumer’s knowledge of your business brand

• strengthen your business' customer brand relationship

• add value to your brand or product

It pays to be informed about the specific needs of your customers. There are different demographics and buyers of certain products. Your customers are more inclined to use particular channels at various phases of the purchase journey.

Touch Point Channels

Touch points allow customers to interact with your business before coming in and also occur in-store for product promotions. The reach of your business extends far beyond the traditional four walls of your retail store, office or warehouse. Touch point channels help you to deliver a greater number of brand messages, emphasise promises between your business brand and the customer and increase customer involvement with your business brand. Touch point channels include

• advertising campaigns

• catalogues

• media advertising

• promotions

• events

• social media

• website

• blog

• press releases

• word of mouth

These days, non-marketing communication touchpoints such as word of mouth and social media are growing and they are having a greater impact on customers and their relationship with your business brand.

Customer Feedback

Touch point interactions create benefits for your business as they are able to access feedback to monitor the satisfaction of your customers. They provide you with customer insights and help you to understand and meet the needs and wants of your customers.

Turning Touch Point Perception into Reality

Touch points serve as the foundation of the relationship and the brand of your business. Before your business can address customer touch points, you must first perfect your business touch points. Your customers develop perceptions about your business based on the quality of the touch points they encounter. These perceptions can be positive or negative. Therefore, you should review from the top down and back again to make sure you and your people are delivering on your customer's perceptions. Touch point people interactions in your business may include

• public speaking

• trade shows

• industry groups

• in-store experience

• sales team

• sales assistant

• call centre

• delivery staff

• bar staff

• waiter

• house keeper

• concierge

• reception and housekeeping

• checkout cashiers

• technician

• security

In-store Touch Points

Your business may also contain in-store communications that have the ability to introduce new brands to your customer and influence spontaneous purchases and get feedback.

Touch Point Measurement

If you have never used Touch points they exist already in your business. You measure your financial performance so why not collect and measure the performance of your touch points. Comprehensive and well managed data is key to understanding increasingly complex customer journeys that are personal to your consumer and the type of product they are buying. Do you have a good understanding of how all of your customer-facing touchpoints are performing? Are they satisfying your customers and meeting their needs and expectations, or are they causing disappointment and frustration? Do you know how your touchpoints are impacting on your bottom line? Do you even know what all of your touchpoints are? If you hesitated even slightly to answer these questions, then now would be a great time to start taking inventory of and measuring your touch points.

Maintaining a diverse range of touchpoints is vital in evolving the customer’s attitudes and behaviours towards your business brand. Businesses that address customer touch points effectively have a much easier time building a sustainable competitive advantage, as well as brand equity. The Business Minder operates as a Consulting Business Analyst for business reviews with clients in SE Asia, notably Bali, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia.