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Reach Your Audience through Digital Marketing Touchpoints

With the continued progression of technology, digital marketing is becoming more innovative and intuitive every year. This evolution of technology provides new opportunities to develop digital touchpoints to support converting consumers to purchase your products and services.

In this article, we will talk through:
The touchpoints of digital marketing
How touchpoints influence your audience
How digital marketing supports business growth

 

The Touchpoints of Digital Marketing

A touchpoint is any point of interaction with a potential or current customer at any stage of the customer journey. Digital touchpoints are no different, they simply refer to interactions with your brand that occur online. These digital touchpoints include your website, digital ads, social media, enews, email marketing, search engine optimization, and so on.

Digital touchpoints allow your business to reach, educate, and engage a geographically diverse yet targeted group of people. It also allows your potential audience the opportunity to quickly engage with and view resources your brand has to help them make an informed buying decision.

It’s important to regular audit your customer touchpoints, ensuring they represent your brand accurately with consistent visuals and messaging to build your brand equity with your audience. With your touchpoints in digital marketing, the end goal should be to connect with your ideal customers, build trust with them, educate them, and move them through to a buying decision with your company.

 

How Touchpoints Influence Your Audience

A potential customer goes through a purchasing decision process, but the first step is making them aware that your business even exists. Say Bob is looking for a solution to solve some plumbing issues in his home, he is in the “exploration” mindset, exploring what options are available to him. Bob may first go online to try to diagnose what may be causing the problem. Here is your opportunity to get your brand in front of Bob with some YouTube videos or blogs around similar plumbing issues and how they can be fixed. Providing educational resources to answer your audience’s potential questions will help build awareness of and trust in your brand.

As Bob continues attempting to solve his problem, he may try to perform some of the tips you recommended in your video or blog, but if he’s unsuccessful he might go back online to learn about more possible solutions to his plumbing issues. Setting up ad campaigns targeted at “in-market” audiences for people searching key terms that relate to your services can help strengthen your digital touchpoints. Bob now sees your ad and remembers your YouTube video. These touchpoints allow you to start building trust that you may be able to solve Bob’s problem.

Bob may also go onto Facebook to request recommendations from people he knows and trusts and will likely receive competitive options. Again, your brand is one that’s recommended and Bob begins to form an opinion of you based on the touchpoints he’s received to this point. Bob makes a list of companies and checks out their websites to learn more about them. Your website is a crucial digital touchpoint to showcase your expertise, process, deliverables, culture, testimonials, and so on. Your website should answer questions and concerns potential customers may have to keep your company in consideration on the journey to making a decision.

As Bob moves into evaluating his options and deciding, he is likely to check out customer reviews for each company he is considering. Reviews are a crucial digital touchpoint and will likely influence your audience’s decision to hire your company or remove you from their list.

This short example is an easy way for you to see why digital touchpoints are so critical. They will influence your audience’s perception of your professionalism, expertise, credibility, and trust, as they see and engage with them while moving through their buyer’s journey.

So, what does this mean for supporting your business?

 

How digital marketing supports business growth

The reality is, if your business is not utilizing digital marketing as part of your growth strategy, you are missing an ample opportunity. But before implementing a digital marketing strategy, you should consider all the possible digital touchpoints and develop them in a way that ensures a positive, consistent representation of your brand.

Consider where your customers are spending their time online. What online platforms and tools do they use on a regular basis. What information does your audience need from you to consider your services? What touchpoints can you incorporate to educate and build trust with your audience? Most importantly, how can these touchpoints support converting your potential customer to the next step in their buyer’s journey with your business.

Take some time and audit how and where your brand is engaging with your audience now and continue to fill in the gaps with meaningful touchpoints to support your business growth.