A Planning tool for Brand Touchpoints

Starting on from where we left in my previous post on Brand Adoption Funnel we move on to how brands make their touchpoints more interesting.

Defining brand touchpoints

What is a brand touchpoint? It’s all of the different ways that your brand interacts with and makes an impression on customers, employees and other stakeholders. It encompasses everything that reminds consumers of your brand, whether its your merchandising display, consumer service call, advertising et al. It is but natural that such touchpoints are aplenty. Research shows that every brand has at least 30 and sometimes up to 100 brand touchpoints that customers, employees and other stakeholders experience on a daily basis.

How do we classify and simplify this clutter which extends across multiple media, avenues and experiences? How do we structure these touchpoints, to ensure that we harness them better? I believe all touhchpoints can be polarized into three broad buckets depending on when they interact with the consumers and how much do they interact.

The When?

1. Pre-purchase experience touchpoints

Eg. Advertising, direct mail, samples.

The goal of a brand in this stage would be to

1.    Retaining current customers.

2.    Heightening brand awareness.

3.  Shaping brand perceptions and expectations. (How is my brand better than competition? What to expect from me?)

4.    Driving brand relevance. Ensure that prospects link the benefits of your brand to important needs and wants in their lives, thereby recognizing the value your brand brings.

5.   Steer the brand into consumer’s consideration set.

2. Purchase experience touchpoints

Eg.  Instore sampling, displays, price, salesperson or even seeing someone else buy the product

The goal of a brand in this stage would be to

1.  Maximize the value that prospects see in your offering and mitigate any doubts they may have about making the right decision.

2.  Delivering value. Make prospects understand the price-value relationship they are getting in your brand vs. other brands.

3. Post-purchase experience touchpoints

Eg. Customer service, customer satisfaction surveys, loyalty programs, newsletters.

Touchpoint goals and objectives in this stage include:

1.      Delivering on your brand promise

2.      Increasing brand loyalty and advocacy

The How Much

Also these touchpoints would vary wrt to the amount of time they interact with the consumer. There could be quick dip interactions such as watching an ad or long term interactions such as brand loyalists building a community around the brand (think apple). Combining the above two learnings we get a planning tool which can help understand how brands interact with the consumers.

The horizontal axis plots touchpoints varying across the time they demand from the consumer.

The vertical axis tells us how personalized or generic the interactions with the brand would be.

The tool provides us clues and cues in every touchpoint so we entice customers toward the touchpoints in the upper right half of the model, where we find the really interesting interactions that provide value to both the customer and the company. It’s in that corner that we find the value that advances a brand beyond their competitors and can create true loyalty.

So that was my thought on how we can classify touchpoints. What do you think? Do share your thoughts in the comments. Next we will try to explore brands who have done exemplary work across these touchpoints and then finally move on to touch upon loyalty. Vikas had expressed his desire for the same in the comments section.

In case you are interested in reading more on brandtouchpoints, I suggest you visit Abhinaya’s blog by the same name- brandtouchpoints. It is one of the leading blogs on branding in India.