How Many Touch Points Does it take to get a customer in 2022?

Every day, there are more than 3.4 billion touchpoints for every consumer in the world. Touchpoints are any form of digital, physical, or mental contact a consumer may have with a brand, from ads to direct marketing to the product packaging and beyond. So How Many Touch Points Does it take to get a customer in 2022? This number is more than double what it was just five years ago!

Touchpoint One: Your Website and Mobile Responsive Design

The first thing you need to do is have a website with a mobile-responsive design. If this seems daunting, don't worry! Several templates or "designs" can give you a great base to start from. Once you have the design, optimize it for search engines by using the most appropriate tags and keywords in the HTML tags and content.

Touchpoint Two: Your Online Store

Creating an online store is the best way to acquire information about products quickly. The goal should be to offer something customized for your brand, which will help you stand out from other retailers. And if you're going to sell online, you need a way for people to order. So don't just offer links for websites where people can buy.

Touchpoint Three: Your social media

Once you've got a website and an online store, it's time to get active on social media. You want to engage with customers on each one of your platforms. You can do this by using the appropriate hashtags in your Instagram or Facebook posts and sharing content that pertains to what people are asking about on Twitter. You can also use social media to encourage people to check out your online store and convert into paying customers. Then create a way for those potential customers to contact you with a live chat feature on your website.

Touchpoint Four: Email

Email is an effective medium for marketing out there, but most people aren't using it in the way they should. Instead of sending discounts or promotions through email, you should encourage customers to sign up for updates via email. And you need to make sure the customer feels like you're creating content just for them. It can be done through automated emails sent when a customer makes a purchase or hosts an email contest.

Touchpoint Five: Loyalty Programs

If you expect customers to come back to your store and purchase again, they need a reason to do so. A loyalty program can help with this. Creating a schedule will allow your customers to be rewarded for repeat purchases. It can be as simple as offering a $5 gift card for your customers when they use their loyalty card (9) or getting discounts on future purchases by doing things such as purchasing in bulk.

Touchpoint Six: Digital Marketing

You use social media, email, and loyalty programs to achieve customer retention. Still, you need to make sure that you recruit new customers and get them in the door with digital marketing. You need to have a website optimized for social media and make sure your blog is up and running so your customers can leave reviews of their experiences. You can then share your thoughts on social media, encouraging people to try out your brand. It can also create advertising campaigns and sponsored posts on popular websites.

Touchpoint Seven: Customer Service

When a customer gets into your brand, you have the opportunity to build customer loyalty and create a great relationship. And even if they don't purchase, they'll probably recommend your store to others because of how you treated them.

It's essential to empower your employees with their resources to provide excellent customer service. It's also necessary for you to have a strategy so that all of your employees are on the same page and using the exact words when talking to customers.

For example, if your company policy is that returns need to be made within 30 days, it's best not to allow an employee who doesn't know this policy to take a return. If you do, there's a good chance that the customer will talk negatively about your business, and that negative word-of-mouth is just as bad as if the customer purchased from a competitor.

Not only is it essential to empower your employees to provide excellent customer service, but it's also essential for you to make sure they're doing so by checking in with them regularly.

Touchpoint Eight: Invest in SEO

The first way is to make sure your website is mobile-responsive. There's no point in paying to get a great SEO ranking if people can't view your page the way it was meant to be considered. The next thing you should do is optimize your site for search engines. It can be done by boosting keyword density, using the most relevant keywords and tags in the HTML tags of your pages and posts, and optimizing images used on the website.

Touchpoint Nine: Constantly Study Best Practices of Top Companies

To remain on top of trends is to continuously study what other businesses in your industry are doing. For example, you can look at the top companies in your industry and see what social media engagement they're getting, what kind of reviews they're getting online, and how quickly people are purchasing from their online stores. You can then use this information to optimally market your business so you don't fall behind the competition.

Touchpoint Ten: Be Consistent with Your Brand

One of the biggest mistakes companies make constantly changing their brand's image. When this happens, customers will likely become confused about what your brand stands for. But you can prevent this by being consistent with your brand's image and focus. Once you have a brand personality, stick with it and build around it.

By creating these touchpoints and sticking to them over time, there's no limit to the amount of growth your business can experience.

Today's Era

As we enter an era where people conduct nearly 100% of their interactions with customers across channels—and more marketers embrace this reality—the number of touchpoints is only going up. If a touchpoint occurs, there is now potential for customer loyalty to be created. It should be good news to you as a marketer: You have the power to create loyal customers who buy more often and often recommend your brand to others.

However, getting there is no easy feat. And in today's marketing climate, which is highly competitive and increasingly digital and data-driven, it can be even more challenging. In KISSmetrics' model, touchpoints make up four categories of touchpoints:

Urgency

The first level in the model is called "urgency," which refers to how quickly a consumer must act to get something from you. In the beginning, your customers are just not ready to buy from you yet—but somewhere down the line might be. It is a crucial point to be aware of.

Suggestion

This level is used to determine whether the consumer would like your brand. It can predict how much they may be willing to pay for a product or service and how loyal they will be. For example, people tend to buy products associated with certain activities like kids, sports teams, and technology products.

Awareness

It is the level of brand awareness about you. If a customer is aware of you, they may store your information.

Relevance

Once you understand how touchpoints work and how your brand needs to react to each of them as a marketer, you're ready to dig into what the future holds for taking advantage of these opportunities. Good thing we've done all the work for couture reference or tell their friends about your brand.

What touchpoints the most important ones?

So, once you understand how many touchpoints it takes to reach that relevance, the next logical step is to figure out what touchpoints will be the most important in the future. Here, we look at the main areas of marketing that our research identified and investigate the conversion rates of each:

1. Direct and online marketing. It matters, including search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search (think Pay-Per-Click) to webpages and social media. We can see that direct and online marketing touches are the most important since they're the first step to getting a customer. It takes only nine touchpoints and four months of direct marketing for a customer to convert from awareness to relevance.
2. Email marketing is second on our list whether you're targeting an industry or a specific audience (like the subject line).
3. However, email touches only take 11 touches and three months to convert a customer. After that, though, it gets pretty interesting: Email marketing converts just as well as online marketing—but you have to wait four months.
4. Online ads are another high performer. It takes six touches and two months for a customer to convert from awareness to relevance, so you'll want to quickly focus on getting your brand in front of customers.
5. Social media marketing is another effective form of marketing, as it's a great way to build relationships with customers on a personal level. However, it would take 12 touchpoints and two months for the average customer to convert from awareness to relevance.
6. The final form of marketing we'll look at is organic search engine optimization (SEO). And it takes just five touches and one month for customers to convert from awareness to relevance.

How customer relationship management gets measured?

If we look at the growth of CRM, we can see that from 2013 to 2022. It will grow from $22.3 billion to a $27.8 billion market. With so much of this market based around how many touchpoints are necessary to get customers to loyalty—and how effective it is—marketing professionals should be spending more money on CRM and marketing automation platforms in the future.

The dollars spent on CRM—and marketing automation platforms specifically—increases every year.

As marketers become more focused on how many touchpoints are necessary during this conversion process, we see that it will only increase even further as brands try new ways to get customers' attention and build loyalty through personalization and relationships.

The best approach brands can adopt to increase customer retention and boost overall revenue is building a robust and deep relationship. Think of this like building a house—you need a solid foundation before making it on.

When you drill down into the data slightly more, we see that an average customer engagement multiplier of 1.5 is practical: It takes five marketing touchpoints and one month for customers to convert to relevance at an ARPUL of $2 per MRU.

So, you see, it's worth your time to spend the necessary money to get customers from awareness and relevance to loyalty because it will improve your overall lifetime value and bottom line.

What about touchpoints for customers to reach loyalty?

As you find about touchpoints and what it takes for customers to reach loyalty and become profitable for your company, you can start looking for ways to make them more likely to do this. A good approach here is by personalizing marketing campaigns and interactions with them. We can see this in practice.

In our example, the revenue per MRU is $13,500, and it takes an average of two months to get customers to relevance. It is a customer engagement multiplier of 1.5, which is effective:

The profit per MRU increases by 50 percent or more by creating a deep relationship with customers over time! It means that a customer who's worth $2 per month in revenue would go up to $3 if they were retained longer and spent more money with your company.

It's worth your time.

So, you see, it's worth your time to spend the necessary money to get customers from awareness and relevance to loyalty because it will improve your overall lifetime value and bottom line. For customers to reach loyalty and become profitable for your company, you can start looking for ways to make them more likely to do this. One of the best ways is by personalizing marketing campaigns and interactions with them.

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Written and Published By The Strategic Advisor Board Team
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