What is a Touchpoint?

The Marketing Rule of 7 states that a potential customer will come into contact with your brand or brand message an average of seven times before they will take action to buy a product or service. These interactions are touchpoints, and understanding where and how those interactions take place are key to understanding your target demographic, how they interact with your content, and how you can convert their interest into sales. 

Understanding Touchpoints

Touchpoints are interactions that an individual has with your brand in the digital or physical world. Touchpoints happen when a potential customer comes into contact with marketing collateral or advertisements that are intended to leave an impression about your brand, products, or services. Touchpoints the interaction between your business and a consumer, while a channel is where those interactions are taking place. Channels can be digital or physical points for contact. Digital channels include social media feeds, your company website, an email, or a digital advertisement like a banner ad. Physical channels could include talking to sales representatives, walking past a billboard, or customer contact inside a brick-and-mortar store.

For example, a social media user might see an advertisement while scrolling their instagram feed. In this scenario, the channel is instagram and the touchpoint is the social media ad. 

There are four main types of media where touchpoints happen: paid, earned, owned, and shared. 

Paid media touchpoints are external marketing efforts that a business invests monetary resources into. Some examples are PPC (pay-per-click) ads, display advertisements, and billboards. These types of paid media touchpoints happen in both the digital and physical world. 

Earned media is any type of media or material that a business has not created themselves or paid for. Some examples of earned media would be ratings of your product or service, reviews, or client testimonials. Earned media is generated organically, and is usually a very effective method of advertising. 

Owned media is content or material that is generated by a business. This comes in the form of blogs and articles, as well as email marketing content such as newsletters. 

Shared media is user-generated content that is intended to be shared across any and all social media platforms. 

Not All Touchpoints Are Equal

Each touchpoint that a consumer experiences can impact them either negatively or positively, and ultimately influence how they feel about your brand. A customer can become either more likely or less likely to do business with you based on the effectiveness of your touchpoints. Being sure to monitor your touchpoints and their effectiveness is the best way to make sure that your efforts are being positively received. If you want to keep track of your touchpoints, their effectiveness, and refine your overall marketing approach, our team at JUICE is able to help you refine your touchpoint strategy and make sure every point of contact is a positive one. 

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