What is a Digital Marketing Touchpoint?

A digital marketing touchpoint refers to any online brand interaction that a customer has with your company over the course of their relationship with your brand.

The customer journey is rarely a straightforward path from first contact to purchase. Customers often interact with your brand across many different channels and touchpoints as they go through your marketing funnel. As they explore and get to know your brand, they need to educate themselves and gain trust in your company before deciding to make a purchase.

Here’s a look at some of the common digital marketing touchpoints a customer might interact with through the course of their journey, and how you can maximize engagement along the way.

Types of Marketing Touchpoints

Consumers interact with many brands online over the course of their day—whether they’re actively shopping for a product or not. Here are some common interactions they may have with brands through every stage of the funnel.

Social Media

Worldwide, the average internet user spends 145 minutes a day using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. They might spend some of that time interacting with their friends, families, and colleagues, but they’re also highly likely to interact with brands there as well—whether that’s reading an Instagram influencer’s sponsored post, responding to a travel brand’s sweepstakes post, or viewing an ad that pops up in the feed while scrolling through Facebook. When customers share a brand’s content, it can serve as an initial touchpoint for new customers as well.

Advertising

Digital ads, including both banner ads and text ads across desktop and mobile platforms, can often serve as an ongoing touchpoint for customers. They might see keyword ads show up on their Google search results page based on their searches, or they might interact with a retargeting ad sequence on Facebook, where they’ll see a new ad that’s relevant to their experience based on their previous brand interactions. For example, if a customer looked at a pair of boots online, they might see an ad for that same pair of boots the next day.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is an example of inbound marketing touchpoint, where customers organically discover the content—most likely via organic search or social media). By developing marketing personas and creating educational and engaging content that speaks to their pain points, you can build familiarity and trust in your brand. Consider developing content including blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, infographics, video content, and podcasts that are geared towards solving problems in your industry, rather than directly focused on your product or brand. This will help you gain new followers and subscribers who will be primed to respond positively to future sales offers.

Promotional Content

When customers are near the bottom of the marketing funnel, they’re more likely to engage with promotional touchpoints through both advertising and your owned channels (including your email newsletter, website, or app). Brand or product-related promotional content might include the likes of product videos, demos, solution briefs, case studies, product landing pages, and promotional offers for a special deal or product launch. Customers will engage with these types of touchpoints at the point when they’re ready to consider a purchase, and it’s your brand’s responsibility to nurture these leads by re-engaging them with relevant content on the right channels at the right time.

Maximizing Engagement with Marketing Touchpoints

The more frequently customers have positive interactions with your brand’s touchpoints, the more likely they are to ultimately make a purchase. So what can you do to ensure that they’re able to maximize engagement with your brand through all of your marketing channels?

Develop a Multi-Faceted Strategy for Generating New Leads

Prioritize a mix of strategies for bringing in new customer leads, including content marketing, social media, and digital advertising. This can serve as an initial touchpoint to introduce customers to your brand and help them engage with your offerings.

Use a Cross-Channel Marketing Solution for Engaging Your Prospects

Once customers have signed up for a mailing list, downloaded your app, or provided contact details, you’ll be able to use a range of marketing channels to engage with them. You can use a cross-channel marketing solution, like Iterable, to set up cross-channel sequences to engage your customers in response to their actions. By incorporating email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messaging, social, etc., your marketing sequences should flow seamlessly from one channel to the next. For instance, if they’re currently browsing content in your app, you can use in-app messaging to engage them further and offer a special promotion.

Personalize Your Content

To maximize engagement with your digital marketing touchpoints, it’s important to develop highly relevant content for each customer. You should not only customize your channel approach to each customer, but provide personalized offers and recommendations based on each customer’s browsing and purchase history, as well as other factors such as their region or birthdate. For example, for a customer’s birthday, you might send a cross-channel marketing sequence that offers them a free birthday burger at their local restaurant chain.

Use Behavioral Triggers to Develop Custom Workflows

When a customer engages with a digital marketing touchpoint, it’s an ideal time to nurture that lead further down your marketing funnel. For example, if a customer clicks on a product page on your app, but then closes the app, you can trigger an email marketing message that includes a special promotion on the item they’d been viewing.

Summary

Google found that it typically takes customers 2.8 marketing touchpoints before they’re ready to make a purchase, and it may involve many more touchpoints for higher value items. To increase the chances a customer makes a purchase rather than dropping out of the marketing funnel, put a comprehensive cross-channel marketing strategy in place that drives engagement in response to every touchpoint and offers multiple opportunities to interact. By offering many opportunities and channels for customers to interact with your brand, you can deepen trust and build loyalty that will help you drive revenue and increase conversions.