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SHOW NOTES

Let’s go back to marketing 101 for a second.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept that, on average, it takes five to seven touchpoints with your brand before someone becomes a buyer.

While it may seem like an obvious part of your marketing strategy, too often entrepreneurs miss the mark with this and don’t fully maximize the opportunities they have to convert leads into buyers.

Ask yourself:

Are you clear on what those touch points are?

Are they powerfully built into your strategy?

Are you optimizing the touch points before the top of your funnel AND after?

If you’re not confident in your answers, I guarantee that you’re losing out on countless potential sales.

In today’s episode of the Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast, I’m sharing how to create a holistic marketing strategy that creates powerful touch points with your brand, builds trust with your leads, and pushes them over the edge to become buyers.

Be sure to tune in, and then tag me on Instagram (@emilyhirsh) with your biggest takeaways and action items from today’s episode!

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Emily Hirsh:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Hope you guys are having a fabulous summer. I cannot believe we are going into July already. I feel like I say that on the podcast and it’s always a wake up call for me because as I’m recording these, I look at the date it’ll come out and then I’m like, “oh my gosh, it’s this date? Here’s what’s going to be happening then.” It’s always in my face around that, and I just can’t believe it. For us, it’s the summer and then kids are going back to school, and then the year is going to be over, and it just goes so fast, especially with kids. I’m sure many of you can relate to that. 

So today’s episode, I want to dive into five touchpoints to a sale, and that concept that you probably have heard before and is marketing 101 really, around it takes on average five to seven touchpoints that someone has with your brand before they become a buyer. That means they’ve seen your name, seen your business’s name, seen your products and your service, five to seven times before they actually decide to buy. What I’m challenging you to think about today is do you have this setup powerfully in your business? What are those potential touch points? How can you look at the before your top of your funnel touch points, and then the after touch points and really optimizing those? 

One of the reasons I was inspired to do this is because we recently signed a client and I always ask my sales team to ask how did they hear about us? Did they see an ad? We have it on our application, but I like them to get even more in depth on the calls if they can. So this recent client that we signed said she heard me on a guest podcast when I was on Amy Porterfield’s podcast, then she heard me on another guest podcast. Then she listened to my podcast. Then she saw one of my ads, but she didn’t click the ad. Then she went to my website and applied. 

That’s a really great example of how there’s a lot of things that happen, a lot of micro-actions that happen throughout a customer journey, and a time from someone going from not knowing your brand to becoming a customer that you may not even know about. Those are things that, that person, I think she actually selected on our application that she heard from me on my podcast, but that’s not even a full, accurate representation of her entire experience because she heard me on a podcast, but she heard me on two guests podcasts first. Then she heard me on my podcast. Then she saw an ad, but didn’t even click the ad and then went to my website later on and was like, “oh, I should actually go apply,” and then became a client. 

I thought that was interesting because one of those things that I thought was interesting was I know, for a fact, there are a good handful of people who come and work with us who see an ad, but don’t necessarily even sign up for the webinar or take action on the ad. But just by seeing it, by reading the beginning copy, or seeing the video, or actually just seeing my face in their feed, it reminds them, “oh, I wanted to go fill out an application,” or, “oh, I might want to go check that out.” That is the power of marketing. 

One of the things that you have to know is that it’s an investment in that, because I couldn’t really go back and attribute her sale to one of those avenues because they all contributed. So that’s where marketing comes into being this very holistic strategy when, you definitely want to know your return on ad spend, absolutely from your direct webinar or whatever you’re doing, and then how many sales. But it does, especially with high ticket, I sell high ticket services and especially with that, it sometimes can be hard because you’re going to have multiple touch points. So where do I attribute the sale? Do I attribute it to being on Amy Porterfield’s podcast, or do I attribute it to the last thing she did, which was listened to my podcast, because both of those things played a part in it? The first source was Amy Porterfield’s podcast and the last one was mine, but she also saw an ad somewhere in there and because she didn’t click on it, it’s not going to be attributed to that ad. That’s kind of the reality of marketing. 

So one of the reasons why you should almost always be running ads, at least to brand awareness and visibility and then lead gen is the priority number two, the reason that you should be doing that is making sure that you’re being consistent, that when somebody is on Instagram, when somebody is on Facebook, when they are scrolling, they will see your name. Then if they come into touch point with your brand in some way, they should see your name again. I think the reason that this person went to my podcast and listened to the podcast and my website, she then started getting hit with ads. I hear that a lot, people are like, “yeah, I went to your website, I checked this out and I’ve been seeing ads ever since.” And I’m like, “good, it’s working.” Right? 

When somebody has that first touch point with you, whether that is engaging on your page, watching a video, joining your email list, clicking on your website, going to your website, clicking on a landing page, they should continue to see you and you should be building in those touch points. Those touch points come in the form of a few different things. Number one, brand awareness and visibility is a way to create touch points. You’re putting out videos or podcasts or blogs or social media content, you’re promoting it so you can get it in front of more people and you’re creating a touch point there. Those are great for initial brand contact, beginning to build trust and growth with that. 

Then number two, you’ve got likely lead generation, and that’s another form of touch point. That’s a more committed touch point, but from there it becomes once somebody is on your list or when somebody has taken an action, such as sign up for your webinar, visited your product sales page, gone to your website, you should be creating really solid follow-up in the form of retargeting ads, consistent on social media, putting out something valuable every single week, whether that’s a blog or a podcast or a video, then the email followup is essential as well, and staying top of mind. Because, honestly, you never know when you’re going to push somebody over the edge. 

I guarantee if you dug deeper into your buyers and you dug deeper into that journey of what’s happening, you would be able to figure out that it’s not linear. There’s very many touch points happening, and the more high ticket you sell, the higher price service or product that you sell, usually it means that there’s more touch points. I would argue that we probably average more like nine to 10 touch points before someone becomes an agency client, because they want to make sure that it’s a partnership that we’re building and people are going to sit there for a while.

So there’s a few things. My goal with this episode is, number one, I want you to start thinking about this because brand touch points lead to more sales, consistency leads to more sales. The way you create that is having a holistic marketing strategy, meaning you hit all those points of brand awareness and visibility, lead generation, and sales and retargeting. Those are three out of five steps in the Not For Lazy Marketers Process. They’re critical and you should be putting effort towards them every day, every week, every month in your business to stay consistent.

The other piece of this that I want you to think about is just asking yourself from a high up perspective and high up view, if you were to look at your business, are you consistent? Are you consistent with the way that you show up online? Are you consistent with the way that you email your email list? Are you consistent in the content that you create? Are you a consistent business or do you get busy and then drop off for three weeks? Where do you fall within that category? You never know if that post, or that podcast, or that video you did, or that webinar you did, or whatever it is that you’re doing, you never know what’s going to push someone over the edge, especially if you’re growing an audience. Consistently showing up with value is very important. You don’t want to just post, and say, “okay, I’m going to post 20 times a week because Emily said I’ve got to stay consistent.” Everything should also be run by the filter through the filter of is my company consistent. 

Number two, if somebody came across this post, this video, this webinar, this ad, this blog, this podcast, would it be enough to convince them that they should trust my company and buy from me? If the answer is no, you’re better off not posting it. Ultimately what you need to do is create a strategy where you are consistent with value and you have the time and space to create at least a couple of valuable pieces of content every week. You can email your list every week and you can show up in that way. 

Then the other piece to this, the last piece I want to say is this is why I talk about marketing as an investment because no matter what, no matter how clean your data is, no matter how good your tracking is and knowing your exact return on ad spend, there will always be a little percentage of your budget that you should just know, or not a percentage of your budget, but just say a reason for spending your budget that’s beyond just the direct return on ad spend. Yes, you want to get it profitable. You want two to three, to 4X return on your ad spend at least, but also if you have that, there’s an additional component of value that you can’t necessarily tie back. That is those touch points. This example of this client who signed on, I wouldn’t be able to tie her to the return on ad spend of the ad she saw because she didn’t even click it and that ad didn’t lead to her applying and working with us, but she still saw it. It was one of the triggers and reminders for her of my company, and that’s going to happen no matter how clean your tracking is. 

There’s many companies, including my own, that we’re constantly trying to make sure tracking is as clear as possible, but there will always be a little percentage where you’re like, I know I’m not capturing that return with my ad spend because I’m not capturing the people who just saw the ad, did nothing with the ad, and remembered my brand so in two weeks or two months from now, they actually took an action. That is one of the main reasons that you should be seeing marketing as, number one, a way to generate leads and sales, but number two, an investment in your business staying top of mind. 

If you compare your business to another one in your industry, do you think that the business who stays consistent, who’s running ads, who’s constantly showing up in front of people or the one who isn’t is going to win? The one who is showing up, posting and creating valuable content, promoting that so new people see it, running ads, spending money to get eyes, leads, and sales in their business, and is consistently investing back in that way is going to win all day long over the company who doesn’t do that and is almost afraid of doing that, or overthinking doing that, or waiting until everything’s perfect to do that. You really need to push to create that, to stay top of mind, to be everywhere. If people are telling you, “I’m seeing your stuff everywhere,” and people do that to me when we do a promotion, or if they, like I said, come in contact with my brand, I’m like, “great, then it’s working,” because that is exactly what I want is to be everywhere. 

So that’s what I have for you guys today. I want you to think about, maybe list out what are all the ways somebody could have a touch point with you? Then what are the ways that you could improve that? Touch points happen before the top of your funnel and after. Top of your funnel is like the core way that you’re getting somebody on your list or you’re getting a sale. So what are the ways that that’s happening and how can you improve that, just in what you already have? You’ll probably find some room for more money for improved sales, for increased sales, because sometimes just optimizing that leads to more sales.

Have questions? Text my team at +1 (512) 648-5723!

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