Recognizing Your Brand Touchpoints
Every company, whether it's a retailer, technology company, medical device manufacturer or online ebusiness, needs to know the simple and memorable connections that their customers have with their brand — the touchpoints of brand experience that are in the background of what you're customer is doing. These simple points of contact-colors, logos and other reminders of the brand- reinforce brand experience. They become the simple clues that folks look for in trying to find the brands that appeal to them. Recognizing the opportunities to include these clues in every interaction point will give you the ability to build stronger influence and relationship with your customers.
Building Pathways to for Brand Connection
So how do you build these connections with customers? How do you connect, rather than intrude, in a way that reminds and relates to the good vibe of your brand? Whether you are using a software application or in a checkout line at Trader Joes, there are simple ways your brand can connect.
It's about building a pathway of connections. Shopping may begin by entering a store. Where do they see your logo? Once in the store, what reminds them of your brand? Is it a color? Is it a symbol on a bag? Is it the shirt color of an employee? Is it the music in the background? Is it the iconic graphics or characters used in the store?
Tracing the customer's path of experience will tell you where you need to show up, where you have the greatest touchpoint opportunities.
In the process of understanding customer interaction you need to map out the ways you are involved with the customer. All those points of contact bring opportunities for your brand to become a valued part of your customer's experience. That customer will see or use your brand and that reinforces how you're perceived.
The Places Where Touchpoints Connect
UPS knows that their brand is the driver and the truck. Everything about that interaction is reinforced through the color brown. (They actually have a protected trademark on the color.) Through this simple experience — the UPS brown — the company knows that they are delivering both packages and the brand experience.
How do you create a brand experience for craft beers served on tap? The beverage goes from a tap handle to a pint glass and then to you. So the tap handle becomes a key touchpoint to connect your brand with the customer. That association is simple and immediate.
When you are being treated at the doctor's, take a look at the brands of the equipment around you. You will see well-known medical brands that reinforce the perception that your doctor's office is a good place; Phillips, Siemens, GE — these all speak to consumers as well as doctors as being reliable and quality-oriented equipment.
Online sites from Facebook to Evite all have a look that reinforces the brand, and reminds you where you are. For example, the Facebook blue is ubiquitous in the site and everything about it.
When you shop at Target all you need to see is the simple, red and white bullseye. That bullseye conveys a brand message about a simple shopping experience that you won't forget. It's on the building, on the website, on the bags, on everything connects you back to the Target brand.
Simple Tips for Brand Touchpoints
Mapping out an approach to branding touchpoints and defining the places where you can connect with shoppers involves some simple steps that will help you gain more visibility with consumers:
- Define the shopper or user pathways.
- Look at key places where your brand can connect, not intrude.
- Use iconic representations of your brand, and keep them as simple as possible
- Reinforce that brand identity, use it often, and stay consistent
- Follow up and test to make sure customers know you.
| 
