BUILD YOUR OWN BRANDCAST: S2 E7 BRAND TOUCHPOINTS

Welcome back to the Build Your Own BRANDcast! Today we’ll talk about Brand Touchpoints and discuss its role in strengthening your brand identity, building customer loyalty, and even boosting productivity among your employees.

We will identify the 4 Brand Touchpoints and what customer interactions fit into each, as well as explore the impact of each on your customers and your organization. Controlling your Brand Touchpoints is essential to creating a strong brand identity.

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EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

What are Brand Touchpoints? Simply put, a brand touchpoints are points where anybody comes into contact with your brand. This can happen internally –inside your company or organization– or externally –with your customers. One of the most ubiquitous examples of a brand touchpoint that anyone can easily identify is the business card. The business card is often the first interaction between a brand and its customers. It’s the first opportunity a brand has to convey how they want to be perceived.

What are internal touchpoints and external touchpoints?

Internal touchpoints are brand interactions within your organization. Many companies overlook how their brand is perceived by their teams, a mistake that can slow down progress. A strong internal touchpoint can ensure that everyone understands the brand and can help them to work in sync.

External touchpoints are brand interactions with your customers. Between the two, the external touchpoints must be prioritized. Not controlling your external touchpoints can leave your brand open to interpretation, giving your customers a bleary image of who you are as a brand and what services or products you offer.

Why is it important to identify and control Brand Touchpoints?

Brand Touchpoints project brand image. They must be kept as strong as possible in order to communicate consistency and clarity to your customers –two things that most brands nowadays lack.

Each touchpoint must be optimized for the greatest effect on whoever it comes to contact with. (04:25) If you don’t control your brand touchpoints, they control you. If you don’t manage the public’s perception of you brand, you put yourself at a great risk. This can degrade your brand and your brand’s promise. (8:00)

Keep in mind: brand touchpoints must always create a positive experience. Work brand touchpoints into your strategy early on. Understand what works. After all, you don’t want to miss an opportunity to connect with your customers.

The 4 Brand Touchpoints

Pre-Purchase touchpoints

Any point of interaction before a customer buys your product or service. This could be your website, your social media handles, your marketing strategies, and ads.

Purchase touchpoints

These are points of interaction after the customer has already decided to purchase. It is one of the aspects least tended to by a lot of businesses. Branding integration is usually poor at this touchpoint which is sad considering that this is the point where you can differentiate your brand.Purchase touchpoints is basically the delivery of your product or service. This includes the presentation of the product/service and the point of purchase or actual transaction: Was the transaction smooth? Was it easy? Was it painful? Was it difficult to get in touch of your brand?

Post-purchase touchpoints

The post-purchase experience is huge because dictates whether people will come back and/or recommend your product or service to others. People can buy from you but it doesn’t mean that they buy into you. An unhappy purchase still means a sale to you but would it bring a residual benefit for your brand? (12:05)Post-purchase experience is what drives likes and shares on social media, and more importantly, future purchases. This will help people decide if you will be their exclusive provider. So ask yourself: How are my customers using my product after they walk away from me?

Influencing touchpoints

This X-factor touchpoint is used to really influence how your audience looks at your brand. An excellent example of this is annual reports. Externally, annual reports attract shareholders. Internally, they can communicate success to your team, boosting productivity and retention. Your ability to influence your staff internally will help in how well your brand is going to be communicated externally. (12:30)Another external touchpoint that falls into this category are testimonials. Testimonials are incredibly effective. It’s an excellent way to capture the essence and the experience that your brand gives. (14:50)

Benefits to having strong brand touchpoints

Brand touchpoints is the beginning of really shipping your brand and making it real to the marketplace. (15:11) Which is why it’s important that you understand why you have to keep them strong.

Customer loyalty. It’s through touchpoints that people become loyal to your brand or become an advocate for your brand and actually sell or advertise your product/service for you–for free.

Differentiation from competition. Touchpoints are an opportunity to stand out and set yourself apart from your competitors. When you are aware of your touchpoints, you can build your uniqueness into the experience.

Guide the foundation of your business. An understanding of your brand touchpoints can serve as a guide in building the foundation of your business. It can affect how you build your delivery, service, and pricing.

“Your ability to influence your staff internally, is gonna go into how well your brand is communicated externally.” 14:34 

“Testimonials is an excellent way to really capture the essence and the experience that your brand gives” 14:50 

“Brand touchpoints is the beginning of really shipping your brand and making it real to the marketplace.” 15:11

WRAPPING UP…

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Thank you for listening to Build Your Own BRANDcast. This is a fruit of many years of experience in branding and we hope that it helps you to shorten your timeline as far as realizing the business or the brand that you desire to drive.

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