What is a Brand Touchpoint?
When it seems like everywhere is cluttered with brands, standing out with a great customer experience is everything.
A brand touchpoint is an interaction between a brand and a consumer. These moments can occur online or offline, and some companies have dozens of interactions with individual customers.
Brand touchpoints refer to your brand's entire digital presence and physical presence. Every element of the customer experience can be considered a touchpoint. If you're coming in contact with a brand, it's a touchpoint.
Customer Journey Mapping
Companies commonly plan out touchpoints in a customer journey map. This strategizing clarifies what should happen, when, why, how, and the desired marketing outcomes. In marketing circles, they say that a minimum of seven interactions or touchpoints is required to generate a sale.
Seven? Whoa. With this number in mind, mapping out your customer experience is essential—think of it as staying in touch with a friend.
Start by thinking about a customer's journey with your brand. Map out each interaction point on a day-to-day basis, and then see how you can improve each one. The result is an amazing customer experience that surprises and delights them, helping to potentially increase loyalty, word-of-mouth and customer lifetime value.
Different Types of Touchpoints
It's worth thinking about touchpoints in a variety of settings. Offline touchpoints can refer to anything consumers take in with their five senses. Examples of this are exterior appearance, signage, and the in-store experience, including interior layout, merchandising, music, displays, and customer interactions with employees.
Online touchpoints include everything from advertising, e-commerce websites, blogs, graphics, marketing emails, SMS text messages, push notifications, images and videos shared on a brand's social media accounts, and much more.
Outward vs Inward Brand Touchpoints
One strategy worth considering is the idea of outward versus inward branding. Under this approach, you split the customer experience into two buckets.
Outward Branding
In bucket one (outward), people are seeing your brand for the first time. In this scenario, you need to be consistent with brand messaging and visual identity standards when it comes to things like your storefront, advertising, sponsorships, events, etc.
Inward Branding
In comparison, with inward touchpoints, you can be a bit more relaxed and have fun with touchpoints such as messaging, campaigns, and other interactions. This approach works well when you are already speaking to your customers and have captured them in your marketing systems.
At this point, you don't need to go so hard on brand recognition. Elements well-suited for a more casual approach include the in-store experience, social media feeds, newsletters, etc.
Or Go for the Best of Both
There may also be touchpoints between outward and inward branding. A website is a prime example—you still need strong, consistent recognition of your brand identity and messaging, but you also want to showcase the fun side of your brand. In this case, a blended approach may be best.
It takes experience to blend outward and inward branding into a cohesive mix throughout your customer journey. If you would like some help with this, let us know.
Get in Touch
Looking for ideas to improve your customer journey and touchpoints? Reach out to the team at Good Digital. We love staying in touch—let's connect!