How to Escape the “Spam Blackhole” of Email Marketing
It’s no secret – your website design can make or break your business online. If your website is littered with design errors, your potential customers may not view your company as trustworthy, which could lead to a significant loss of business. So, whether you’re starting from scratch or revamping your existing site, it’s crucial to avoid the common design pitfalls to ensure that your business stands out online.
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It’s one of those days. It’s Monday morning, and you’ve already forgotten to grab your morning coffee, leaving you feeling particularly irritable. You’re determined to focus on the important project awaiting you this week, but your phone seems to have a mind of its own — buzzing incessantly.
You’re curious about the messages flooding your inbox, only to reveal yet another email from that clothing company vying for your attention with their latest sale. And the worst part? You don’t even remember signing up for these emails in the first place. The notifications all seem to blend together, offering nothing new or intriguing. Frustration sets in, and what’s your natural response? Without hesitation, you swiftly hit the delete button, just like all the others before it.
Email marketing has emerged as a crucial element in today’s digital landscape, given the staggering 4 billion people across the globe actively use email.
This vast user base presents an unparalleled opportunity for businesses to leverage the power of email marketing and unlock significant growth potential. By implementing effective email marketing strategies, businesses can connect with their target audience, deliver personalized messages, and foster meaningful relationships. Regardless of whether you are a burgeoning startup or an established enterprise, harnessing the potential of email marketing can expand your reach, enhance brand awareness, drive customer engagement, and ultimately propel your business to new heights of success.
Unfortunately, many businesses are missing out on the full potential of email marketing by implementing ineffective strategies or failing to prioritize this valuable channel altogether. Whether it’s sending generic, mass emails that lack personalization or bombarding subscribers with excessive and irrelevant content, these missteps can lead to disengagement, unsubscribes, and a tarnished brand reputation. However, by understanding the best practices and avoiding common pitfalls, businesses can turn their email marketing endeavours into a powerful tool for nurturing customer relationships and driving sustainable growth. In this blog, we’ll not only dive into the significance of email marketing but also shed light on the common mistakes to avoid, equipping you with the knowledge and insights needed to optimize your email outreach efforts effectively.
Make Your Emails Eye-Catching (and Finger-Tapping)
The first step to running a successful email campaign is all about building a strong and healthy email list. Buying a list is never the way to go – emailing people without their consent can actually do more harm than good. It not only damages your brand reputation but also leads to low open rates, which can mess up your IP reputation and even get your future emails marked as spam. Yikes!
Let’s shift our focus to a more effective approach.
When it comes to building a healthy email list, it’s all about unleashing your creativity and providing irresistible incentives.
How about launching innovative campaigns or offering compelling deals like gift vouchers, sales, or promotions? These enticing offers are sure to captivate your audience and get them excited to share their email addresses with you. By offering value and appealing benefits, you’ll forge a strong connection with your audience and organically grow your email list. So, get those creative gears turning and watch your email marketing efforts soar!
Utilizing Tight and Organized Hitlists
Many novice email marketers often fall into the trap of sending their digital newsletters to as many recipients as possible in hopes of maximizing conversions. However, what they fail to realize, often learning the hard way, is that this approach can severely damage their web reputation.
When unsolicited or irrelevant emails go unopened, it negatively impacts email open rates, which are vital for maintaining a strong IP reputation. To ensure high open rates and preserve your IP reputation, it’s crucial to be selective with your email list. Only send your emails to individuals who are genuinely interested and likely to engage with your content.
Don’t Be Afraid to Start Fresh with Your Email List
Regularly reviewing and verifying your email list every 6-12 months is a prudent practice. By scrubbing your email list, you can retain only those addresses that demonstrate the highest open rates, discarding the rest. This process not only helps in proactively removing disposable email addresses but also ensures that your engagement remains high. By staying vigilant and maintaining a clean and engaged email list, you can protect your IP reputation and achieve greater success with your email marketing campaigns.
Deliver Simple Emails that are Worth the Open
In a highly saturated email landscape, capturing attention requires making your emails contextual and relevant to users’ interests, incentivizing them to open and engage with the content.
Consider this: if someone recently purchased a health supplement for weight management, they are far more likely to respond to an email about healthy eating tips or exercise routines rather than information about skincare or stress management. By tailoring your content to match their specific health and wellness interests and needs, you increase the likelihood of capturing their attention. Whether it’s a follow-up email or a cold email automated by cold email platforms, contextual relevance is paramount.
To achieve effective contextualization in your email marketing efforts, it is crucial to segment your users into different groups based on their actions, behaviour, and preferences.
Segmentation allows you to create personalized email campaigns that deliver targeted content resonating with the specific interests and needs of each user segment. By harnessing the power of contextualization and employing advanced segmentation techniques, you can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your email marketing strategy. The ability to tailor your emails to the preferences and behaviours of different user segments enables you to capture their attention and provide them with content that precisely meets their expectations.
Through thoughtful segmentation and contextualization, you can nurture stronger connections with your audience, delivering emails that are more relevant and valuable to them. This, in turn, leads to higher engagement rates, increased open and click-through rates, and ultimately, better overall results for your email campaigns. By continuously refining your segmentation approach and leveraging contextualization techniques, you can drive greater success and take your email marketing to new heights.
Aim for the Inbox, Not the Spam Folder
Email deliverability has long been a challenge for marketers, but its importance has grown even more with the widespread use of email as a marketing tool. To improve email deliverability, segmentation and contextualization play a crucial role. By sending emails only to specific groups who are likely to open them, you signal to the email algorithms that your messages are not spam, increasing the chances of them landing in the “updates” or even the coveted “inbox” folder.
Targeting your audience helps deliver relevant content, reducing the chances of triggering spam filters. Segment your email list based on user preferences and demographics to send personalized emails that resonate with each group.
Prioritize Producing Content that Your Mailing List is More Likely to Interact With
In addition to targeting and segmentation, other factors such as content and creativity impact email deliverability. Emails that are visually appealing and engaging have a higher chance of being read and not ending up in the trash, which can influence future deliverability. Choosing an email marketing platform or service known for its good deliverability rates is also essential to ensure your emails reach their intended recipients.
By focusing on segmentation, content quality, and selecting a reliable email marketing platform, you can improve email deliverability and increase the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.
Track and Learn From All Your Metrics – Good or Bad
Tracking metrics after sending emails is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns and making informed decisions to improve future content. While open rates and click rates are widely recognized as important metrics, there are other key metrics that should not be overlooked.
Monitoring Delivery Rates
Firstly, monitoring deliverability and delivery rates is essential. Deliverability refers to the percentage of emails that actually make it to recipients’ inboxes. A high deliverability rate indicates that your emails are successfully reaching their intended destination, while a low rate may suggest issues with spam filters or email authentication. By tracking deliverability, you can identify and address any potential deliverability issues to ensure your emails are reaching your audience.
Conversion Rates, ROI, and Other KPI Metrics
Furthermore, tracking conversion rate and return on investment (ROI) is vital for understanding the overall effectiveness and success of your email campaigns. These metrics help you determine how many recipients not only opened and clicked on your emails but also took the desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a service, or filling out a form. By tracking conversion rate and ROI, you can evaluate the direct impact of your email campaigns on your business goals and make data-driven decisions to optimize your content and improve campaign performance.
Subscriber Retention and Satisfaction
Lastly, monitoring subscriber health is important for maintaining a healthy and engaged email list. Tracking metrics such as unsubscribe rates, spam complaints, and inactive subscribers can provide insights into the quality of your audience and the effectiveness of your content. By regularly evaluating subscriber health, you can identify trends, refine your targeting strategies, and ensure that your emails are reaching an interested and engaged audience.
Taking Your Email Marketing to the Next Level in 2023
By avoiding common pitfalls and implementing effective strategies, you can optimize your email outreach efforts and achieve remarkable results. Remember to build a healthy email list through creative incentives, be selective with your recipients to preserve your reputation, and deliver content that is relevant and engaging. With thoughtful segmentation, contextualization, and a focus on metrics such as deliverability, conversion rate, and subscriber health, you can refine your approach and take your email marketing to the next level. By continuously evaluating and improving your campaigns, you can nurture stronger connections with your audience, drive higher engagement rates, and ultimately achieve your business goals.
So, unleash your creativity, personalize your content, and make sure your emails land in the inbox, not the spam folder. Embrace the power of email marketing and seize the opportunities it presents to expand your reach, enhance brand awareness, and build lasting customer relationships. With the right strategies in place, your email campaigns can become a formidable tool in your marketing arsenal, driving success and propelling your business towards new horizons.
The 3 Musts for Building an Outstanding Website
It’s no secret – your website design can make or break your business online. If your website is littered with design errors, your potential customers may not view your company as trustworthy, which could lead to a significant loss of business. So, whether you’re starting from scratch or revamping your existing site, it’s crucial to avoid the common design pitfalls to ensure that your business stands out online.
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It’s no secret – your website design can make or break your business online. If your website is littered with design errors, your potential customers may not view your company as trustworthy, which could lead to a significant loss of business. So, whether you’re starting from scratch or revamping your existing site, it’s crucial to avoid the common design pitfalls to ensure that your business stands out online.
By sidestepping website design errors, you can significantly enhance your online presence, attract more visitors to your site, and ultimately drive sales and improve your bottom line. Some of the most common design mistakes to avoid include slow-loading pages, cluttered layouts, poorly-chosen color palettes, and non-responsive design. By having a well-designed website, you can win over the trust of your audience, establish your brand identity, and achieve your business goals online. Remember…
Your website is your digital storefront, and it’s the first impression many customers will have of your business.
So, take the time to invest in your website design, and you’ll see the benefits in increased traffic, engagement, and sales.
Prioritizing Mobile-Responsiveness on Your Website
In today’s digital landscape, navigating the internet can be a complicated journey.
With individuals hopping between devices to access the web from smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers, TVs, and even smartwatches, it is crucial to ensure that your website looks great on screens of all shapes and sizes to provide a satisfying user experience. This is why having a website with responsive design is so important.
Google Favours Mobile-Responsive Websites
In recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that Google has shifted towards a “mobile-first” approach. With more users searching the internet on mobile devices than ever before, it is essential that websites are easily accessible and responsive to any device. Google’s primary goal is to provide valuable and accessible content to users, and as such, the algorithm is designed to favour sites that meet these criteria, by being responsive and user-friendly.
Having a website that is mobile-friendly can significantly impact your search engine ranking, as it improves the user experience and accessibility for all users, regardless of device. By ensuring that your website design is responsive and tailored to different devices, you can improve your website’s ranking on Google and attract more traffic to your site.
While it’s true that mobile devices generate the majority of online traffic, desktops are still a close second. A responsive design enables you to cater to both worlds and reap the benefits of both. It maintains the integrity of your website’s content while adapting it to fit the specifics of different devices, resulting in a more user-friendly experience. This ensures that your website content can render fittingly across all devices, making it simpler for visitors to engage with and enjoy your site.
Embrace the ‘Mobile-Comes-First’ Mentality
When creating a new website, it’s important to prioritize the mobile experience by adopting a mobile-first approach. This involves designing the initial layouts to look great on smaller screens and scaling up the design for larger devices once it’s complete. By prioritizing mobile responsiveness, you can ensure that your website is accessible to the majority of users who browse on their mobile devices.
Starting with a mobile-first approach also allows for more efficient design decisions. By designing for the limitations of a small screen, you are forced to focus on the essential elements of your website, leading to a cleaner and more streamlined design. This can improve the overall user experience on all devices, as users will be able to quickly find what they are looking for without getting lost in cluttered design.
Failing to implement a responsive design could mean turning away a significant piece of the 4+ billion individuals that prefer scrolling the web on their mobile devices.
Incorporating a mobile-first approach into your website design process is a smart decision that can help you create a website that is optimized for all devices. By focusing on the mobile experience first, you can ensure that your website is accessible to the majority of users and create a more efficient and streamlined design.
Emphasizing User-Navigation and Accessibility
Providing great user experience to your website visitors is crucial to keep them engaged — responsive web design ensures that websites are faster, more accessible, and easier to navigate. With responsive design, users can quickly find the information they are looking for, leading to higher engagement and retention rates.
Incorporating responsive design into your website can also help to improve overall user satisfaction. By creating a website that is optimized for all devices, you provide a seamless experience that users will appreciate. This, in turn, can lead to improved brand loyalty and increased customer retention rates.
A Responsive Site Means Customers on a Silver Platter
Having a responsive website is essential for businesses. It can increase website traffic, improve lead generation, and ultimately lead to increased sales. With more and more users accessing the internet from mobile devices, businesses that don’t have a responsive website risk losing potential customers and falling behind their competitors.
Are you willing to lose out on potential customers because of a poorly built website?
Responsive websites have become a critical aspect for businesses in today’s digital age as they can significantly enhance website traffic, lead generation, and ultimately result in increased sales. The benefits of a responsive website are plentiful, from increased website traffic and lead generation to higher conversion rates and revenue.
A well-developed website is not just an option, but a necessity for businesses looking to stay in the competition.
Now, It’s Time to Tie in a Fully Designed Website
Imagine strolling through the populated streets of downtown Vancouver, and you come across a brand new clothing boutique with a creatively designed window display. The storefront is attractive, conveying a story with a striking backdrop and unique designs that capture your attention. However, in another circumstance, you pass by a Hudson’s Bay, and guess what? Nothing catches your eye.
Just like a storefront’s window display, your website is your digital storefront, and it’s crucial to make it stand out. Your website must reflect your brand’s identity and have a unique feel. One of the significant errors businesses make is selecting a pre-made website template and not customizing it. By going for a generic template, you risk getting lost in the crowd and not leaving an impact on potential customers.
It’s worth noting that your website is usually the first interaction potential customers have with your business. As such, it’s critical to make a lasting first impression by creating a responsive website that accurately represents your brand and engages your audience. An efficiently designed website can drive website traffic, improve lead generation, and ultimately lead to increased sales, delivering an excellent return on investment for your business.
Finding the Right Look for Your Website
When it comes to designing a website or developing a brand, finding the right design is all about first identifying your business’s core values and building upon them. Your website design should align with your business’s mission and values to create a cohesive and unique brand identity. By doing so, your website will have a consistent and memorable look and feel that resonates with your customers and potential clients.
Designing a website involves a wide range of factors that can influence its overall look and feel. This includes choosing the right colour scheme, typography, layout, images, and graphics. These elements should all work together to convey the message of your brand and communicate your business’s values and mission. For example, using a bright and playful colour palette can work well for a children’s toy company, while a sleek and modern design may be more appropriate for a tech startup.
Maximizing Your Business’s Online Reach with a Beautiful Website
To wrap it all up — it’s clear that website design is a critical component for any business looking to establish a robust online presence.
The impact of a poorly designed website cannot be overstated as it can significantly undermine your online credibility and result in lost opportunities. Therefore, prioritizing mobile responsiveness, user-navigation, and accessibility are fundamental in creating a website that is optimized for all devices, user-friendly, and appealing to potential customers.
By integrating creativity and functionality into your website design, you can distinguish yourself from the competition and improve your overall online presence. Always remember that your website serves as your digital storefront, and investing in its design can yield increased traffic, engagement, and sales. In a world where first impressions matter, a well-designed website is the difference between success and failure. So, take the time to create an outstanding website that accurately represents your brand and leaves a lasting impression on your audience.
Utilizing AI-Generated Content Properly to Perform Effective Copywriting
With technology evolving daily, industry leaders are finding that AI utilization is one of the best methods for quickly developing compelling ad copy, blog articles, website copy and other material that involves finding the best data available, efficiently. But when is it not the right choice for your copywriting?
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Imagine buying a new puppy but struggling to control its constant, endless barking. To make things worse, you live in a poorly-built apartment building with no concept of “quiet.” Your neighbours have been complaining about the noise, and you can’t focus on your work. Desperately searching for a short-term solution, you turn to Google.
Would you prefer to read a text-heavy article filled with generic tips and tricks, adding to your stress? Or would you rather read a personable blog post from a more experienced dog owner who faced the same problem and found a solution? Chances are, you would prefer the latter.Reading from someone who has been in your shoes and has firsthand experience is more valuable than reading from a robot pulling information from various sources and creating a lengthy article.
On the other hand, now imagine you’re a local marketer, trying to develop your skills and business in the copywriting field. You’re trying to scale your growth as much as possible as living expenses rise in Vancouver, but realize there’s only 24 hours in everyday — and you’re working, ALL OF THEM (it seems). Hopelessly, you find that you’re busy 24/7 with your current client base, but need that extra money in order to actually live.
By introducing an AI-assistant into the copywriting process, you no longer have to spend as much time as you normally do, creating and editing copy.
An AI assistant can take in human input, like keywords and section headings, and use that data to quickly produce initial drafts of text — this could include blog or article copies, product descriptions, newsletters or documentation — anything a writer might need. This means writers, like you, can have more time to focus on designing the tone and optimizing the text for quality without having to slog through grueling hours of writing. Ultimately, the goal is for an AI content generator to minimize effort while still producing a high quality. If it can do that for you, the team at Big Fish Creative thinks it’s definitely worth exploring.
How AI-Generated Content Can Make You More Efficient as a Copywriter
AI assistants, like ChatGPT, Jasper, and Bard produce results based on user-provided input. It’s not magic, but it is definitely an interesting, intricate concept. AI writing assistants undergo training with various types of real-world data, over and over. Through this learning process, they become more proficient at generating output that sounds natural. As AI tools receive information from humans, the output they produce is also human-like. Similar to how human writers research existing content to create new content, AI content tools scan the internet for existing content and gather data based on user instructions. They then process the information and produce fresh content as output.
AI can be used to quickly develop compelling ad copy, blog articles, website copy and other material that involves finding the best data available, efficiently.
Since AI has been trained to scan the internet for real-world data and focuses on finding the most well-fitting and attractive data for you, the user, it’s quite handy to utilize this type of material for time-consuming projects, such as copywriting or marketing. AI is also great at harnessing the best SEO (Search Engine Optimization) content for your niche/business. Every day, AI crawls the internet on behalf of users, retrieving information ranging from industry research to original user-generated content that can accurately reflect their message.
This means that the daunting task of hefty content creation, becomes substantially quicker and simpler when done through AI. Rather than spending hours researching and editing written materials, harnessing this technology makes it possible for content creators to deliver high-quality, attractive material in a fraction of the time with perhaps even greater info accuracy.
However, There’s a Lack of Originality with AI-Generated Content
With the number of people using AI for work or leisure continues to increase, the data and information retained by AI systems also develops at an exponential rate. Additionally, the AI tools retain the voice and style of the user-given input text, allowing AI to generate outputs that sound more human-like than ever thought possible. As AI continues to be utilized, the information retained will progressively build, making it a powerhouse for information, copywriting, and many other things data-focused.
For example, if you ask an AI writing tool to create marketing copy related to selling real estate, it will search its collection of info gathered from millions of relevant websites. By using this data, the algorithm can predict the next word that should appear in the output sentence. This prediction technique ensures that the output isn’t at risk of plagiarism, making the content highly unique.
However, the limitation of artificial intelligence content writing lies in its inability to create something entirely new — it’s limited by the data stored in its neural network. Therefore, AI struggles to generate content that includes a lot of recent information, such as financial news or stock updates, or topics that have yet to be covered online. Also, when original and unique copy is necessary to rank (on Google and other search engines), AI content writing may fall short.
Finding Your Voice in Copywriting and Marketing Copy
When it comes to creating a strong connection with your audience, the tone of voice you use is just as important, if not more, than the content you are delivering. Studies have shown that 65% of consumers believe that a brand’s tone of voice is a key factor in building an emotional connection with the company.
Your tone of voice can help to convey your brand’s personality and values, and can ultimately shape how your audience perceives your company.
While the content you produce may be informative and valuable, the tone of voice you use can be the deciding factor in whether your audience engages with and retains your message. Your tone of voice is essentially the attitude or style with which you deliver your content, and can range from formal and professional to casual and conversational.
By utilizing a quality tone of voice throughout your content, you can help to establish a strong brand identity, build trust with your audience, and help encourage them to take action.
In summary, while the quantity of content you produce definitely counts (even more so on social media platforms such as Tiktok or Instagram), it’s your tone of voice that can truly resonate with your audience and help to build a lasting emotional connection with your brand. By carefully crafting and consistently using a tone of voice that aligns with your brand’s personality and values, you can create a powerful tool for engaging and connecting with your audience.
When and Where to Utilize AI-Generated Content for Your Business
Artificial intelligence has proven to be highly efficient in producing certain types of content that do not require human insights, opinions, or creative inputs. For example, data analysis, factual content pieces, and SEO-driven articles can take hours for humans to write, while an AI system can compile and publish the information within seconds.
By utilizing AI, you can effectively reach a larger audience with a much higher quantity of still fairly good quality content.
According to Tyler Bishop, the CMO of Ezoic, “AI can perform slightly worse than humans, but it can complete the task at scale, much faster than humans.” Although AI has its limitations, it can still be an invaluable tool for creating content, especially when used appropriately.
How To Turn Your Brand Touchpoints into an Automated Demand Generation Strategy
It’s estimated that you are exposed to roughly 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements each and every day! This number might seem a little absurd, but think about how many logos you see around you at this very moment. Quite a few, right? While you’re probably not losing any sleep from thinking about these brands throughout the week, these logos and any other digital marketing creatives you may have seen are essential for establishing impactful and long-lasting relationships with your consumers.
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In the marketing world, the process of getting your brand in front of the eyes of consumers has grown to become a complex part of the consumer journey. With that being said, today’s consumers are savvier than ever and all too familiar with being bombarded with marketing at every which way they look. So how can ensure your marketing efforts are effective in creating the best customer experience?
Touchpoints.
Understanding how to best design and position your marketing touchpoints is essential to both strengthening your brand awareness, generating product/ service demand, and growing your business as a whole. But before we go any further, let’s break down exactly what touchpoints are and how they can benefit your business.
Table of Contents
- What Exactly Is A Touchpoint?
- Why Should Your Business Care About Touchpoints?
- Your Company’s Touchpoints
- Type 1: Common Touchpoints
- Type 2: Stealth Touchpoints
- Properly Utilizing Your Touchpoints
- Social Media
- Facebook and Google Ads
- Website
- Reviews
- If You Can’t Maintain Touchpoints, At Least Monitor Them
- Be Consistent Across All Marketing Platforms
- Thoughts to Leave With…
What Exactly Is A Touchpoint?
A touchpoint is defined as a channel of interaction with a potential prospect or existing customer. Touchpoints could be in the form of nearly any sort of marketing material. For example:
- An Instagram post from your favourite brand of coffee
- A Twitter update from a company you follow
- A newsletter from a `business you’re subscribed to
- A user review for a service you’re considering
- A brand’s logo on the receipt of a recent purchase, and more
Implementing effective touchpoints is a critical part of designing an engaging and impactful customer experience. This contributes to establishing the basic marketing funnel, which includes strengthening brand awareness, consideration, action, loyalty, and advocacy – more on this later.
Commonly, you have 1 group of brands who are scared of giving off the wrong image via these touchpoints, and therefore, they would rather avoid it. The other group understands the importance of certain touchpoints and blasts them with repetitive, generic ads without a core strategy.
Neither of these are really “winning” at marketing
Don’t get us wrong. If you don’t have the resources to maintain your touchpoints, that’s a valid excuse to brush them to the side while you focus on other things, like hiring the right people or improving your product. If you’re in the stage of generating leads, however, then touchpoints should be considered an essential component of your marketing plan.
Why Should Your Business Care About Touchpoints?
When touchpoints are managed properly, they work to inform your target audience of your business’s offerings, elicit interest, and generate consistent demand for your sales team. This is true for both large-scale corporations, as well as local startups and boutiques.
In this article, our marketing experts will walk you through the processes of successfully navigating your marketing touchpoints and how you can turn them into part of an automated demand generation strategy. Keep reading to learn how you can take advantage of brand touchpoints to help launch your business to the next level.
Your Company’s Touchpoints
The easiest way to understand your touchpoints is to understand the customer journey. Without conducting a full-out market research campaign (unless necessary), try putting yourself in the shoes of your customers. Think of all the ways potential customers could find their way to your brand, conduct research about your brand, and talk with your sales before finally becoming a customer.
Customer preferences and behaviours are always evolving. To stay ahead of the latest trends, you may want to consider gaining direct feedback from your customers (i.e. email surveys) for insight into current customer trends and preferences — in case your existing understanding is outdated or misaligned. Identifying and improving the touchpoints along the way will not only help your advertising efforts but also make prospects gravitate towards you every step of the way.
Remember, each time a customer makes contact with your business, they are forming an opinion or revising their opinion. These touchpoints can be positive or negative and so can have a massive influence on the customer’s decision-making process.
From start to finish, your customers will see and encounter your brand both offline and online. from your logo to your advert, posters or window displays, your website or app, social media sites or online reviews. Or it could be from a word of mouth recommendation, contact with yourself or your staff in person, on the telephone or online.
Generally speaking, all touchpoints can be categorized into 2 types.
Type 1: Common Touchpoints
Here are a few common digital touchpoints for both local and online companies:
- Facebook profile and posts
- Instagram profile and posts
- Facebook and Instagram ads
- Email marketing campaigns
- Google Ads
- Your Website
- Your Google My Business Reviews
With over 4.8 billion digital users worldwide, these online touchpoints are essential for growing your digital presence and allow you to tap into new audiences. As an added benefit, the majority of these platforms are free to use, so there should be no excuse to start strategizing your digital touchpoints.
Type 2: Stealth Touchpoints
Stealth touchpoints are touchpoints that consumers would not typically perceive as a “touchpoint.” This is because stealth touchpoints typically appear to be more “natural” and “organic.” While they aren’t as common, depending on your marketing goals and objectives, stealth touchpoints offer their own set of benefits. Here are some examples of stealth touchpoints:
- Yelp and other review platforms such as Reddit and GlassDoor
- Comments on social media accounts
- Native advertisements
When done correctly, these touchpoints can subconsciously influence your prospects’ decisions, without them realizing your brand’s contribution in it.
Properly Utilizing Your Touchpoints
Take some time out of your day and look at all your touchpoints. Are they aligned and pushing a unanimous message to your prospects? What about the brand imagery?
While it is crucial to be consistent across your touchpoints, there are 4 major categories that can be further broken down and used for different purposes. From the top of the funnel to closing on leads, each of these categories serves a different purpose.
We’ll guide you through some ways you can effectively utilize your most common touchpoints:
- Social Media
- Facebook and Google Ads
- Website
- Reviews
1) Social Media
The goal of Social Media is to produce engaging content that stands out from the rest. While some of your followers may be top of the funnel traffic that have found your platform through browsing, the majority of users that stick around will likely have had some form of interaction with you in the past.
Social media provides businesses with the opportunity to communicate brand authenticity and showcase the humanity or personality behind the brand. For most companies, the purpose of social media is to maintain an active digital presence to engage and interact with users.
In the past, engagement outside of physical stores and print ads (posters, flyers, billboards, etc.) was not exactly a top priority for many brands. However, digital media has completely redefined the way businesses approach the consumer journey and brand touchpoints.
Social media is a powerful and influential touchpoint, but with its rapid growth and ever-evolving nature, it’s important to handle it with care. Taking advantage of social media as a touchpoint, we recommend the following:
- Post regularly and invite your followers to interact with your posts (i.e. ask them to comment and share their thoughts!)
- Engage with your followers and reply to comments, questions, and messages in a timely manner
- Promote any ongoing events or exclusive deals.
These touchpoints allow you to establish a stronger and more meaningful relationship with both new and existing customers. Be authentic with your images and align your messaging across platforms to achieve the best results.
2) Facebook and Google Ads
One of the most popular methods of utilizing Facebook and Google ads is for standard lead generation. For example, targeting prospect buyers by behaviour, keywords, interest — the whole lot.
Businesses should also consider Smart Display and Remarketing/ Lookalike campaigns. This allows you to reach people similar to your existing audience, or target any prospects who have recently interacted with a viral or heavily boosted post of yours. Just make sure to exclude anyone who has already converted (unless for e-commerce businesses).
Growth Tip: a great way to optimize your marketing efforts on Facebook and Instagram advertisements is to “disguise your ad” as a native piece of content on the platform. Native ads match the function and form of content on the platform it appears on. This allows the marketing material to look less like an “ad” and more like organic/ non-sponsored content.
Instead of going full corporate and taking a sale-sy voice, try a more personal approach. Be relatable, be personable, and make the content look like it belongs on customers’ newsfeed — not like it paid to be there or like all it wants is your money!
3) Website
The core of your front-facing operations. Other than good UX, good conversion optimization practices offer value to customers. Give away your best products, whether that’s knowledge to your industry, or product samples, any information that creates value
If your business doesn’t already have a website, check out our article on why a beautifully designed website is essential to growing a business, then hurry back!
A website is one of the most intimate and forward-facing touchpoints available to businesses. If a customer is on your website, chances are they’re there with a purpose in mind — there’s no better opportunity to capture their complete attention and communicate the value your business can provide them.
While a website is a brand touchpoint itself, functionalities within your site are equally as important as touchpoints. Website features work to further engage with consumers with your brand and guide them through your marketing funnels. These features may include:
- Contact and inquiry forms to get in touch with your business
- Live messaging capabilities for answers to your questions in real-time
- An easy-to-understand website navigation structure, and more.
4) Reviews
Customer reviews are another effective touchpoint and allow you to gain direct insight into how your customers perceive your business, products, and services.
Good reviews are innate to businesses providing good value to consumers. However, when it comes to actually receive customer reviews, many incentivizing tactics are largely underutilized by businesses.
Make it a practice to ask customers for reviews, even if they haven’t completed a conversion! The worst they can say is no (or leave you a bad review, but this is unlikely). User reviews allow you to build up “social proof” and develop your brand’s reputation and legitimacy.
It’s important to reply to positive comments when possible to show your gratitude. With that being said, it’s equally (if not more) important to respond to any negative comments to show you care about your customers and are actively working to improve their experience.
If You Can’t Maintain Touchpoints, At Least Monitor Them
Not everyone has the resources to continually update or push out content through their touchpoints. If you can’t maintain an active digital profile, consider at least monitoring your digital presence. When your company name or product offering starts trending on Twitter or Reddit, you do not want to be the last to know!
Be Consistent Across All Marketing Platforms
It is also important to ensure all your communication, messages and images are consistent so you create a cohesive brand and give the right impression. Having limited outlets for information is better than utilizing all outlets and having different messaging on each.
Thoughts to Leave With…
Today, marketing is a real challenge for many because customers are savvy and fickle. They can access tons of comparable products make decisions well before making any contact with you. Information about your business is out there, 24/7 across the world, and there’s no way you can control all of it. However, if you take the time to understand, review, and strengthen your customer touchpoints, you will begin to notice a significant improvement in the way customers interact with your audience.
Making your touchpoints a key part of your marketing strategy can help drive new leads and sales to your business. Nonetheless, we understand that while core digital marketing practices may come a lot easier for some businesses, they can be a little confusing for others – and that’s ok! Many businesses work with marketing specialists, such as Big Fish Creative, to accelerate their growth. Marketing specialists work to identify your biggest weaknesses and greatest marketing opportunities to launch you ahead of your competitors.
For more tips and advice on how you can grow your business, be sure to check out our other articles.