What parts of your business should marketing be involved? In this post, I am discussing Customer Touch Points to answer that very question. Since I like to guide clients to the highly effective basics.. identifying touch points is easy to figure out: Every instance in which any representative of your company comes in contact with your customer or client is a touch point. Your choice is to leave those touch points (representatives) to their own devices or you can apply a process (marketing) in those areas which assures your customer’s satisfaction with your company.
“Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” American Marketing Association (AMA)
There is a misunderstanding among, especially small, companies that marketing is just advertising and sales. Marketing is actually the entire experience your customer has with your company. Marketing is all of your (internal) receptionist, billing, customer service, your products and services, your tellers and delivery people. And your (external) branding, advertising, salespeople, collateral representation and, the (extended) contract vendors you choose, all are also responsible for the success or failure of your company. Everything and everyone combined, equals the process by which you communicate the value of doing business with your company to your customer. As a rule of thumb: If it reaches, touches or talks to your most valued customer – It’s a touch point.. apply marketing.
As a side note: Maybe it’s my age but it astounds me that companies (owners / managers) don’t see the value of applying marketing to all aspects of their company. In my euphoric state I think, if applied, then customer service and the quality of your products and services will be the best they can be in order to compete, to stay alive.. In my opinion now is the time to ‘kiss’ your customers often and frequently at every place your company.
Pay attention to every aspect of your business which your customer experiences when they do business with you. Think through your customer’s process with your company: How would you want to be greeted? When you make a purchase, Have a problem, Find a discrepancy? Come back to do business again? The way which I make a decision to use or no longer use a company can almost always be based on the service I receive before and after the ‘sale’.
Ask yourself: When was the last time you did business with a company based purely on their presentation in an advertisement, and stopped doing business with a company based on their billing policies? What separates you from doing business with a company also separates customers and clients from doing business with you. It’s the business owner who realizes that marketing is the experience their customers have with every aspect of their business that are the winners.
