Touchpoint Marketing Chapter 4: Introducing the Touchpoint Marketing ELATE Framework

Introducing the Touchpoint Marketing ELATE Framework

This is the fourth part of a seven-part series on Touchpoint Marketing. Catch-up on the first, second and third parts to know more about the thought process that has led to this ELATE Framework

Touchpoint Marketing is all about having a disciplined, focused and passionate 5-point strategy abbreviated as the E.L.A.T.E. strategy. And what better abbreviation? Eventually, beyond all the 4Ps and 5Cs of Marketing, isn’t it all about ELATE-ing the only C that really matters? – the Customer!

Here’s finally unlocking the manuscript of this tightly inter-locked Touchpoint Marketing strategy of ELATE.

Engage

Through your unique Brand Personality

Ensure that all the customer Touchpoints right from your service kiosks, bank counters, relationship managers, showroom sales staff, delivery staff to your helpdesks, website, ATMs, after sales, customer service execs and complaint & grievance cells  are talking to same language.  All your brand imagery and messaging needs to be deeply entrenched across your Touchpoints. It needs to come across strongly in not just your communication, but more importantly in the customer interactions. Imagery is not just a wish or attitude of how you want your brand to be perceived by a customer. Imagery, Brand personality, Positioning are essentially more based out of your Touchpoint interactions. In simple words, your Brand personification is not a wonderfully woven Outside-In concept from your media agencies. It is infact, a steadily built Inside-Out effort reflecting the DNA and culture of your organization.

In India, MCdonalds is practicing it very consistently. Run across any of their stores and you’ll come across very similar standards of service. Cheery interiors, further enhanced by a happy, helpful and peppy staff. Others like Domino’s and Pizza Hut too are achieving this with a good degree of success. These food joints have realized the power of such Touchpoints and are certainly investing a lot in training and ingraining the Organization culture to these multiple ‘faces of the company’.

To add, over and beyond the traditional Touchpoints, companies need a distinct strategy to keep the Social Media Touchpoints pretty engaging as well. With its unique features, social media offers new opportunities for increasing transactions and gaining new customers through promotions and rewards programs. Infact, the level of engagement and dynamism generated from this media could be a key differentiator for many businesses –

• Design your marketing programs to exploit features unique to social media. Social media provides cost efficient, highly leveraged, and unique engagement opportunities (e.g., social networks, viral advocacy, one-click transactions, check-in/location services, scalability, etc.).
• Make it more engaging through platform strategy, content strategy, marketing and promotions, social  and mobile apps
• Identify and engage social media influencers. Convert them to brand advocates. Increase engagement to boost customer acquisition. Figure out innovative strategies to monetize your Social Media pull. Strategies to convert cute Likes to committed Love!

Link

One Brand, One Customer, One Experience

As indicated earlier, how often have you been pushed around by multiple departments in a company? How often have you felt lost in the complex web of organization structure? How often have you felt dealing with two completely different companies before sales and after sales (Mahindra Holidays, ICICI)? or during Business development pitches and final outcomes (various Outsourcing consulting firms with BD-transitions-Operations/delivery structures)?

Ask any existing Maruti car owner and he’ll vouch for its after sales service (ASS).  Yes, the company makes great value cars – aggressively priced, packed with features and fuel-efficient. But at the same time, a major component of Maruti’s success is its wide ASS. It’s not just an attitude reflected in its advertising (finding a Maruti service station in the nowhere of Ladakh mountains). It is a well-established fact that its customers feel delighted about. The wide ASS network and easy availability of cheap spares completes the One Experience picture for Maruti. All the afore-mentioned factors providing good resale value for Maruti cars and thus further enhancing its appeal. It’s a wonderful way of providing value right from Sales to After Sales to Resale (Maruti True Value) to Upgrade. The complete journey of a Maruti customer from his Alto to SX4 to Grand Vitara. Wonder why they haven’t used such a convincing script in their advertising? Zindagi ka Paiyyah, Meri Maruti! (driving the wheels of life, My Maruti!)

Touchpoint Marketing is about Linking up all your brand Touchpoints to a uniformly satisfying Customer Experience story. Needless to say, it’s essential to Link-in your social media strategy as well by creating a seamless user experience that drives conversion. Capturing, analyzing, and acting upon customer input in the various stages of the “conversion funnel” is key to reaching your objectives. Allow a good amount of tailoring of your social media promotions for various target segments. Allow them to create their own communities thus further enhancing the appeal of such programs.

To know more, continue reading the fifth part of this seven-part series here

Touchpoint Marketing Chapter 2: Are Your Satisfied and Loyal Customers Committed Enough?

Are Your Satisfied and Loyal Customers Committed Enough?

This is the second part of a seven-part series on Touchpoint Marketing. Catch-up on the first part here

 

• How often have you come across a wonderful piece of direct mailer that makes you feel ‘The chosen one’?
• Yes, retailers keep blasting us with end-of-season, fresh-stocks, and clearance sale mailers on a perennial basis. But those are generic mailers. How often have we seen a customized mailer or offer from a retail chain?
• Our Banks and Insurance firms keep us occupied with higher interest rates mailers and ‘we care about you’ kind of mushy mailers. But how often have you witnessed a terrific pitch of up-sell or cross-sell from your bankers/insurers?
• Everyone has been doing database-based telemarketing since the birth of Christ, but how often have you come across a genuine case that talks just to you? A Marketer who actually knows your attitude, preferences, lifestyle and lifestage and has a terrific offer ‘Just for you’!
• My hatchback car company never reached out to me for a potential upgrade. I love their latest Sedan. Just a gentle nudge, some offer, some freebies…and I am sold on. But no one ever attempted this.
• My Insurance firm never tried a potential cross-sell for a kids plan despite being well aware of my lifestage.
• My online holiday provider was of good help during my last vacations. But they never reached out again with some exotic offers and locations for my next vacation.
• My executive education service provider takes web-based management lessons to the length and breadth of this country. However, closer home, its own team is struggling for simple customer service etiquettes.

Makes me wonder, where is all that Analytics going into? Is it sitting in water-tight silos? Does all the output from ivory tower data warehouses goes in creating only historical patterns, trends and dashboards? The predictability, the power to predict that we keep talking about, never reaches the on-the-field marketing teams?

In today’s age of ubiquitous feedback forms and KYCs, do companies actually KTCs i.e. Know Their Customers?

To improve sales, you don't necessarily need more customers. You need better customers.

A concept wonderfully explained in Jan Hofmeyr & Butch Rice’s seminal work in Commitment-led Marketing.

The customers that your data says are your most satisfied may be the most likely to leave tomorrow. So are you asking the right questions and measuring the right dimensions? Some customers appear to be loyal because they habitually buy a product, but this does not mean they are committed to it. They appear to be loyal because in all probability they don’t have many options. They may be the first to fly off your radar the moment another similar product arrives. More like commitment levels in many long-term marriages and relationships. Many times, loyalty could just be a virtue of lack of exciting options! 

Loyalty is what customers do. Commitment is what they feel! Customers can appear deceptively loyal but actually be uncommitted (they might only use the brand because everyone else does (Microsoft), through lack of choice, affordability, or distribution. Commitment-led Marketing is about creating a Conversion Model that allows companies to segment users by commitment to stay, and non-users by openness to adopt their brand. By applying this to their brand, and competitors, companies can identify the right strategy to defend share (if they are a large brand), or steal it (if small). It’s time companies and marketers start acting on the fact that customer satisfaction is a poor predictor of behavior – commitment is better. How many committed customers are being created and nurtured across their Touchpoints?

Many businesses believe mass advertising through email marketing, billboards, radio/TV, direct mail and other channels alone will drive sales. They couldn’t be more half-baked in their assumption.  ‘Above the Line’ Media simply creates awareness, interest levels, enquiries, walk-ins and at best, trial purchases. Beyond that, it’s your brand attributes and service features that take over.

Many businesses simply create the pre-requisite Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter home pages and think they’ve cracked the Social Media Marketing (SMM) puzzle. Just beaming over the no. of likes and shares (most often by your own employees) can’t be the only defining metrics for SMM. It’s more about how your brand has adapted or presented itself in the social media context. How is your brand engaging (and not just informing and entertaining) with the online customer?

This shotgun outbound marketing approach (one to many) is very helpful in creating the ‘Brand Decibels’ – the awareness. It ensures is setting up potential customers’ first meeting with your brand. Beyond that it’ your ‘Touchpoints’ that need to make conversations, conversions, establish connect, build relationships, drive repeat purchase and most importantly enforce commitment. Touchpoint-based marketing is all about smart and focused client retention through effective inbound marketing. All the marketing media, with their distinct reach and impact, help building your brand saliency (awareness). But what actually builds a Brand is what happens when the customer ‘pull’ results in equally impactful customer service or product commitment.

To know more, continue reading the third part of this seven-part series here