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A touchpoint happens when a current or former customer interacts in some way with your product or brand. The touchpoints can be as subtle as seeing your brand logo in a store window to as forthright as witnessing your product in action or testing your product themselves.
If touchpoints are positive, it's more likely this customer follows a path where they seek out more touchpoints that are more interactive and captivating in the future. If the experience is negative, the customer will avoid more touchpoints. Each touchpoint is an opportunity to make or break a connection with a customer. It pays to understand marketing psychology, how customers' emotions influence their buying behavior, and how you can activate a customer's emotional responses to increase purchases now and at every touchpoint in the future.
Using customers' optimism bias to maximize consumer touchpoints
Find out why customers choose to make a purchase. Humans make choices in the part of the brain that controls emotions. Optimism is like a drug to the human brain that can work with your marketing efforts. One way to optimize touchpoints is to recognize customers' optimism and use it to manipulate their buying decisions.
According to Tali Sharot, 80% of consumers have optimism biases that strongly influence their behavior. That means, in short, that nearly everyone believes they're more attractive, interesting, intelligent, better at tasks, and more talented than other people. Confirm their optimism biases by agreeing with them. Make them feel smart, attractive, and funny.
A person's attitude matters a lot in their perception of your product. Those with high expectations almost always walk away from an experience feeling happier than those with lower expectations. Do everything you can to connect with people who have high expectations and discriminating tastes. These people are often more social than others and will disseminate their opinions of your product to their contacts, creating new customer touchpoints that you don't have to work or pay to establish.
Build anticipation about products
Product anticipation makes customers happy. When you build excitement and anticipation about an upcoming product release, it's a great way to impact customers in a highly positive way, increasing the likelihood that that customer will come back for more. Examples of this type of positive touchpoint are iPhone releases and Harry Potter series book releases - the excitement leads to more sales.
Give samples or freebies to make a big impact
When a touchpoint influences a customers' well-being in an unusual way, customers remember it. Adding a piece of candy or a product sample to a customer's order is an excellent way to make a touchpoint very impactful. Forgetting a buying experience is easy, but remembering is easier with a branded freebie. Most customers forget about their purchases within a few days to one week. Giving customers samples and freebies makes them remember you for years. Not only will customers remember you, but giving them a small freebie cements their loyalty to your business and increases their desire for your products.
Make the customers' lives easier and personalize their experience
Everyone shops because they need to solve a problem. Why a customer is shopping matters a lot in how you can influence their purchases. If they're shopping out of boredom, entertain them with a funny anecdote about a product. If they're shopping because they're out of a product at home, ask them if they've tried a similar upgraded product with better features. Admittedly, taking advantage of these touchpoints is much easier in person than with online shoppers. If your business is online, have salespeople ready in the chat window to ask customers whether they need help finding a specific product.
Brick and mortar businesses have an easier task of maximizing touchpoints. If your store has a delivery service, the delivery person has a great opportunity to make an impactful touchpoint a reality. If the customer wants contactless delivery, the best thing you can do is make sure the delivery person looks presentable and goes above and beyond the call of duty to ensure customers' products are safe and protected. Many people have cameras on the front of their homes and pay attention to a delivery person's attention to detail.
Not everyone coming into your store is going to have a great attitude, but you can create a more impactful touchpoint for a customer who is pessimistic than optimistic - if you use the right tools. Customers who are facing a serious problem and need your help are a great example of this. Maybe their stressor is money and they need a product badly but can't afford it. Searching for a coupon for them is a great touchpoint. Actually giving someone a coupon or a discount at the register when they need it most is an even better touchpoint. Actions like these increase customer retention for years, and it can even cement generational loyalties within families. A grateful customer never forgets your kindness. Touchpoints like these are an opportunity to create brand loyalty that business owners' dreams are made of.
Always try to activate customers' emotional responses
Remember that every touchpoint is an opportunity to make a lasting impact. Always bring your A-game. Make sure your business' brand elicits a positive response that customers will remember and want to repeat. Going out of your way to help customers can also cause a customer to disseminate your brand to their friends, thereby creating positive touchpoint after positive touchpoint. Maximizing every touchpoint by eliciting an emotional response pays dividends and contributes to your business' growth for years to come.
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BBB of Southern Piedmont and Western N.C. contributed this article.