>> Touchpoints Strategy and Plan
Drawing on customer experience learning, our inbound marketing consultants work with clients to plan and align various marketing touchpoints within the customer decision journey.
Significant changes to a client’s marketing approach often result, as marketing channels, media (e.g., website, social media marketing, search marketing, email campaigns, mobile, face-to-face), messaging and other efforts are realigned to better reflect the way customers approach decision-making.
Touchpoints strategy and planning approach:
Touchpoints alignment considers the business from three perspectives: 1) a diagnostic audit of where you are today; 2) a vision of the ideal (including the potential role of new and emerging digital marketing assets); and 3) the strategy and plan to get from the current state to the intended future.
Drawing on prior customer experience research, client/consultant workshops are conducted to prepare, review and refine the recommended touchpoints framework, which encompasses:
- Customer journey, created earlier, which articulates key steps that occur in the customer decision making process and establishes the overall framework structure
- Value proposition, which breaks down the various products, services, and other components of your core offering. This could include your core product, services like training and support, extended protection, etc. These components are mapped to the customer journey where they occur
- Marketing mix components, including a break down traditional/offline media (broadcast, print, retail, personal selling, phone) and inbound/online media (website, search, social media)
- Messaging matrix, demonstrating messages that are being actively communicated, which could be a single message or a series of messages across the consumer decision journey
Moving from the current situation to the intended future, the following questions are considered
- Are we focusing on the right customers (as informed by customer personas and the customer journey)?
- How well are current touchpoints aligned with that customer persona and his or her decision journey?
- Do opportunities exist to better impact decision-making? Are we over-investing in certain marketing vehicles and under-investing in others?
- Are messages aligned to win at every point? Do we need more targeted messaging to reflect customer journey or will more general messages do?
Touchpoint alignment needs to occur both “horizontally” over time as well as “vertically” within each stage. Horizontal alignment considers the optimal media mix and messages as customers move from one stage to the next (e.g., from awareness to research stage). Vertical alignment occurs within any given stage (i.e., within the awareness stage, are various media and messages aligned?
In many companies, different parts of the organization manage different customer-facing activities, so gaining an integrated perspective will require cross-functional involvement and often outside assistance to improve the overall experience. Further, spending may need to shift to realign value proposition, marketing mix and messaging to be in the right place at the right time with the right information and support to make the right decisions.
Once touchpoints have been aligned, an experienced EquiBrand inbound marketing consultant can assist with activating the touchpoints plan, across website design and development, social media marketing, search marketing and other marketing tactics.
Contact EquiBrand for more details or to arrange a call with about our inbound marketing consultant services.
