Want to increase the number of clients for your business?
The four actions you can take to increase clients are:
- Integrate online and physical channels for your business
- Make your digital touchpoints stand out
- Align your brand with all your touchpoints
- Track and control the consumer journey for your business
Integrate online and offline presence
Research points out that businesses with multiple channels often fail to integrate their online and physical outlets to create value. Using Cisco as an example, the research shows that its online store has a limited connection with its physical warehouses. As a result, the customers at the physical outlets are not aware of the comprehensive online offers and the online shoppers are not encouraged to check out the physical products in person. Further, integrating online and physical channels also make profiling consumers and collecting data and analytics easier. With a weak integration of physical and online presence, many sale opportunities are missed.
In a business-to-business context, the lesson is to use your online presence to encourage in-person and physical interaction. Also, your business’ physical touchpoints need to lead to continued online engagement.
Make your digital touchpoints stand out
Everyone on the internet is competing for attention. The only way to convert your business’s online presence into sales is to stand out to your target audience. A 2022 research paper explores B2B consumer touchpoints in depth. The study confirms that in a B2B context, touchpoints that communicate expertise, service excellence and reliability are the main drivers of profit. Hence, by emphasising these values along with your unique selling point in your business’ online touchpoints, you can stand out from your competitors.
Online touchpoints can include social media mentions, posts, blogs, advertisements, newsletters, events and webinars. Importantly, online touchpoints need to pique potential clients’ curiosity. With online content, you can prompt them to further engage with your business. To achieve this, you need a comprehensive understanding of your competitors and social media marketing.
Make your business’ touchpoints and branding consistent
It is important to align your brand with your business’ online and physical touchpoints. Research conducted by companies like Deloitte and Accenture emphasises the importance of a consistent consumer experience. The primary reason for consistent branding across all business touchpoints is to build trust and reliability. If the consumer’s impression of a business changes every time they engage with it, the inconsistency will create confusion and distrust.
Consistent branding is a key to converting engagement to sales. By creating a consistent experience for your clients across all the touchpoints across the consumer journey, you can create more value and business opportunities.
Take control of your consumer journey
The goal of managing your business’ touchpoints is to keep your clients on the consumer journey. The five stages every client goes through are awareness, consideration, purchase, service and loyalty. The touchpoints along the way can determine whether they continue on the journey. Understanding and controlling your business’ touchpoints can maximise the odds of turning engagements into sale opportunities.
The two kinds of touchpoints are managed touchpoints and unmanaged touchpoints. Managed touchpoints are your potential client’s online and physical engagements that are controlled by your business, including social media content and in-person interactions. Unmanaged touchpoints are engagements your business has limited control over, such as reviews on third-party websites and word of mouth.
It is important to make the consumer experience as positive as possible. You can make the managed touchpoints valuable and consistent. Controlling unmanaged touchpoints are difficult. Nonetheless, you can leverage influence over them through consistent marketing and communication.
