Why Brand Touchpoints Matter
It's about building customer connections
Each connection to a brand builds and reinforces the customer's experience of a product or company. Brand loyalty is built on a continuing series of positive customer experiences that continue to fulfill the needs and aspirations of customers. Whether it's the fanatical Trader Joe's customer who loves the products and prices, or the loyal Apple customers who love their iPhones and Macbooks, a company wants customers to feel loyalty to the brand through fresh, positive brand experiences.
This is where brand touchpoints are essential as small, persistent creators of customer experiences that renew and reinforce a customer's positive connection to the brand. Each interaction becomes part of the entire experience of the brand, from shopping to purchase to use of the product.
The Brand Platform — The Foundation of Touchpoints
The core of a brand lies in key messages of the brand platform, the three to five statements that represent the cornerstones of the brand. Identifying these can allow marketers and management to define the aspects of their business that connect to the concerns of customers. This is where defining and developing touchpoints are critical to continuing customer relationships.
Once a clear position is defined a brand can effectively target specific market segments, go after those customers and build loyalty through touchpoints.
 Create Tangible Connections to Consumers
Every step in your business process contains a number of touchpoints where the customer comes in contact with your brand. Your ultimate goal is to have each touchpoint reinforce and fulfill your brand promise.
This is where developing a map that links consumer touchpoint experiences that reinforce the brand is essential even for the smallest company to connect customers back to the brand experience.
 Define the Most Important Touchpoints
Not all brands are the same-aspects of the brand experience vary because of the nature of the product and how it's delivered to consumers.
The website for Amazon, for example is an essential touchpoint for the consumer shopping experience-virtually all shopping experiences, choices and selections are made there. This is true for most ecommerce sites. The brand lives in the shopping experience so each page, button, offer and purchase is a touchpoint. The single largest area where most ecommerce brands lose customers (up to 85%) is the check out process. Those key pages create loyalty for customers, who want a simple and straightforward experience.
Touchpoints for other brands include packaging; remember the Tropicana fiasco where the company forged ahead with a redesign that dropped the orange with the straw, thus losing millions in sales? Other touchpoints include everything from the actual package design and product experience to customer service, the logo, store colors, and taste and smell for fast food restaurants. The shopping experience and signage at Trader Joes, reinforced down to the goofy 19th century illustrations on the product packaging, bags and Fearless Flyer — all aggregate to create a sense of Trader Joe's as delivering good stuff in a personal, caring environment that respects the customer.
The point is to paint a picture that leads customers to an internal concept of the brand. Building this map can create a clear reinforcing experience that separates your brand from others.
 Reinforcing Brand Experiences
To determine the touchpoints driving your customers' overall experience, you can use a wide array of techniques, ranging from quantitative research to organizational knowledge and history. The methods you use will depend on the complexity of your products, commercial processes, and your existing knowledge base.
Consumers are looking for the clues that tell them they made the right choices. How you map and present customer touchpoints will build that loyalty over time. The use of Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and other online media also builds a connection to the brand as others define and describe their brand experiences.
It's important to identify which experiences don't align with positive customer touchpoints. Review what does not fit with your brand and make conscious choices for changing or removing these areas.
 The At-A-Glance Effect and Why It's so Important
Lastly, the most important aspect of touchpoints is the at-a-glance effect. As mentioned in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink we have subliminal intelligence through visual clues that we are making the right choices. The simple yellow of French's mustard, the use of blue chips on Jet Blue, the simple Apple logo (white, black or silver), are all subtle connections back to the brand and our positive experiences.
 Listen and Repeat
Creating a consistent plan to manage your touchpoints is essential. And what's even more important is paying attention to what touchpoints really matter to customers. Every product or service you bring to market yields a customer experience. Are you creating the experiences you intend? Does that experience fulfill the promise you've made to the consumer? Mapping out a consistent and focused approach to building your brand touchpoints will reinforce the positive and successful experience of your brand.
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Names are important to brand recognition and in some cases literally define the brand physically and geographically. The City of New York is fighting for the value of one its landmarks in Central Park: Tavern on the Green.
Brand Assessment
