360° Touchpoint Management
How to control marketing investment:
improving performance
using the optimal market development mix for sales and marketing
What is a Touchpoint?
Which Touchpoints are important and relevant?
Brand- or customer touchpoints are all those interaction or contact points of a company or brand
with clients, non-clients and other stakeholders
before, during and after a sale.
Put another way:
which investments in market development activities are truly worthwhile at a time of tight budgets
and fragmented media marketing channels and
target groups – and which are a waste of money
or even contra-productive?
These different touchpoints – whether conventional or unconventional, off- or online, personal
or via mass media – each have a different significance.
The greater a company’s success in meeting
the expectations and needs of its target group
through finding the «optimal market development
mix» and building a brand-typical client experience, the greater will be its success at winning
new clients and increasing client satisfaction.
Examination of the many different contact opportunities and instruments places sales touchpoints
at the centre of attention.
Overview
Each of these touchpoints has a different impact
on the client experience. The more this succeeds
in meeting client expectations and needs, the
higher its success, as measured by new-client
acquisition, client satisfaction and client loyalty.
Touchpoint management should be understood
as a multi-disciplinary strategic approach, which
results in optimised performance in all marketoriented management areas Integrated Marketing
and brand management thus becomes transparent and controllable.
Zurich consultancy and research firm Accelerom
has shown that poor investments in sales and
marketing can be prevented, and performance
improved, using its proprietary Touchpoint Management system. The measurement process
used has been validated in a joint research project with Zurich University.
Over the past few years, well-known companies
have used this to optimise their marketing and
brand management investment budgets, sink
costs, and demonstrably increase the efficiency
of their market development mix.
See for yourself how professional Touchpoint Management has improved sales and marketing performance in practice:
Exceptional know-how for export success
Osec is Switzerland’s official export promotion
body, with a mandate from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs SECO. Serving numerous
SMEs in a variety of industries, with different requirements and export markets, Osec provides
valuable export know-how, advice and information. Osec used 360° Touchpoint Management to
find innovative new communication channels for
its information services to meet the diverse needs
of its clients.
«How can I make the most of my budget? The
comprehensive inclusion of the client perspective
allows us to direct our communication and information services more precisely to satisfy the varied needs of exporters. With our new knowledge,
we are now in a position to further develop the
contact points with our clients using innovative
methods in an efficient and effective way.»
Martin Rahf
Head of Marketing, Member of Senior Management
www.osec.ch
Even more client-oriented
German medical insurer SBK has been serving
clients successfully for 100 years. SBK focuses
on customer proximity, service and individual advice for its 720,000 insureds, and has won the title
of «Germany’s most client-oriented service provider» three times in a row (www.bestedienstleister.
de). Accelerom evaluated the key marketing and
brand management contact points for each target group in the competitive healthcare market,
helping SBK to enhance client proximity, optimise
budgets, and implement innovative opportunities.
«Achieving top performance calls for constant
adjustments. 360° Touchpoint Management gives us the transparency and certainty we need
that we are building future-oriented client contact
points with the right focus and levers. We can use
our resources and budgets more efficiently and
effectively.»
Heike Heinz
Head of Client- and Marketing Management,
Controlling
www.sbk.org
Using the global growth potential of the product range more efficiently and effectively
Since the sale of its first knife 125 years ago,
Victorinox has conquered every continent and
continuously developed its product range. From
pocket knives to watches, luggage, perfume and
apparel, Victorinox stands for top-quality functional products. According to the University of St
Gallen’s Center for Innovation, Victorinox is one
of the ten «Most Innovative Companies in Switzerland 2009». How to continue this success?
Accelerom showed the potential for an efficient
and effective brand strategy to achieve additional
sales and innovation worldwide.
«The clarity we have gained gives us the security
we seek in making decisions involving the right
priorities and investments to develop our unique
brand. The new decision model from Accelerom
has let us adjust our brand strategy and action
areas in a careful and effective way for the global
market.»
Carl Elsener Jr.
CEO Victorinox
www.victorinox.com
Closer to bank clients – even without branches
DAB bank is Germany’s first online broker, with
a consistent long-term strategy for its services
as an asset manager handling securities. As a
direct bank without branches, DAB bank has to
rely on effective and efficient direct client contact.
Using 360° Touchpoint Analysis, they were able to
identify the marketing activities with the greatest
potential for business development in their fastmoving competitive environment, and optimally
design these.
«With the increase in possible options, the risk
also increases of choosing the wrong focus
points. In this environment, the demands placed
on management systems are enormously increased. Touchpoint Management enables targeted
and continuous optimisation of the marketing mix,
and thus maximises our return on investment.»
Thomas Hamele
Head of Customer Relationship Management &
Analytics
www.dab-bank.de
Checklist for an «optimal market development mix»
Strategy and activity evaluation list
What are the 30 most relevant Touchpoints for your brand from the client point of view?
What will be the 10 most innovative Touchpoints in your industry over the next two years?
Which activities should be re-examined based on insufficient breadth and depth of impact?
What Touchpoints positively differentiate your company from the competition?
Which key Touchpoints require targeted optimization?
What investments in what activities promise an optimal return on investment?
Which integrated combination of activities is most promising for comprehensive marketing- and brand management?
What Touchpoints can be used to approach and win new clients?
Which Touchpoints are particularly suitable for creating client loyalty to the brand?
What Touchpoints strengthen the brand-typical client experience?
Using opportunities
«The optimal market development mix»
For companies and investors in economically
challenging times, sound risk- and opportunity
assessments of strategies and activities are more
crucial than ever. Because of the importance
of these decisions, Accelerom developed 360°
Touchpoint Analysis to optimize marketing and
brand management.
The «optimal market development mix» lets firms
reach (potential) clients in a prompt, appropriate and inexpensive manner. To achieve performance-oriented marketing and brand management, the 360° Touchpoint concept identifies all
the company’s or brand’s contact points from the
market perspective, then evaluates and maps
them by relevance.
The results reveal the decisive touchpoints for
(potential) clients, and how these can be best
used in the marketing mix, thus helping companies to implement new, more successful, and less
expensive strategies.
The advantage is that the right path to achieve
the goal can now be identified within the labyrinth of possible pathways. Just like a navigation
system, Touchpoint Management helps to steer
sales-oriented processes and thus minimises decision- and investment risks in our dynamic marketing and communication environment. Perfect
orchestration, the right dose of the various market
development instruments, and excellent creativity
enhance impact and success.
From the clients’ rather than the company’s
perspective
It is only by measuring from the client perspective that the relevant off- and online contact points
and channels can be identified from the many
available, then evaluated, and compared.
In summary, 360° Touchpoint Management is
a solid basis for successful long-term market
development and brand management, which
provides:
A diagnosis of the current situation presents the
most comprehensive picture possible of interactions with (potential) clients, with a market forecast adjusted for the company.
· Increased effectiveness and efficiency
through the «optimal market development
mix»
· Impact-oriented control of investments
and resource allocation in sales, marketing,
service and brand communication
The result of the investigation is an «optimal market development mix», through which substantial
efficiency reserves can be rapidly released and
return on investment (ROI) maximised.
· Comprehensive management of the brandtypical client experience
· Increased process efficiency and reduced
operational complexity
· Innovation management for marketing and
brand communication through consistent
client orientation
360° Touchpoint Analysis
The touchpoints with the most impact are filtered
out of the multiplicity of different touchpoints and
arranged into four interaction categories: sales,
one-to-one, mass communication, and indirect
communication. Using key indicators on reach
and depth of impact, the touchpoints can be
compared for each target group.
The Touchpoint Matrix
Touchpoints can be localised in the Accelerom
Touchpoint Matrix, as these are collected for each
company and their impact measured. It is this
Reach
measurement and comparison that enables systematic optimisation of the market development
mix.
strong
Covering Touchpoints
increase brand presence
Question Mark Touchpoints
offer potential savings
weak
Core Touchpoints
strengthen customer satisfaction
and client loyality
Potential Touchpoints
innovate and differentiate the
client experience and offer
potential savings
strong
Touchpoint Value
Measurement and comparison enable optimisation
The deceptive security of «reach»
The complexity involved in choosing suitable
sales and marketing instruments is enormous.
Exactly which contact points and strategic focal points are truly decisive now and in future?
Discussions during a sale, customer magazines,
exhibitions, newsletters, adverts, seminars, hotlines, blogs, POS promotions, posters, sponsoring, web sites, search machine optimisation, or
community forums?
Traditional indicators, such as requests received,
pure circulation numbers, or contact opportunities
in different media provide insufficient information
on relevance, effectiveness, or even how much
potential has been exploited. In the final analysis,
they deliver a deceptive sense of security.
Touchpoint Management measures contact points
with clients, and uncovers which are really relevant. Company-specific surveys reveal the extent
and quality of contacts in a transparent and comparable way, helping to simplify control of market
development activities, and reduce complexity
and risk.
Very often, the effective reach (contact quantity) and especially the depth of impact (contact
quality) of the individual instruments can only be
guessed at.
This is why a consistent view from the client perspective is necessary. Experience shows that there are often astonishing differences between what
a company perceives and what the market sees.
Cost savings without loss of impact
Setting the right priorities for the future
The choice of inappropriate instruments, unrealistic assumptions about performance, or far too
little investment in key contact points, can make
achieving goals in marketing and brand management extremely difficult or even impossible. Market success is decisively affected by the quality of
the underlying information.
Depending on the company and the industry, the
«optimal market development mix» varies greatly.
Contact points with existing and potential clients
are very different in their effectiveness.
The 50% of advertising investment which is thrown away, according to Henry Ford’s well-known
saying, can be quickly, simply and precisely localised in the company.
Under- and over-investments can be revealed,
and the resources freed-up either saved or invested in more effective touchpoints, which may previously have been under- or incorrectly weighted
due to not having the necessary key data.
Using 360° Touchpoint Management, a system is
created that provides comprehensive and internally consistent key data, which delivers transparency in several areas: the market, the company,
the competition, and customer categories. This
allows a multilayered market development mix to
be efficiently and effectively designed, while reducing marketing expenses but without shrinking
results.
Alongside proven or useless touchpoints, innovative and promising new touchpoints can be identified and put into a future-oriented market development mix. In this way, Touchpoint Management
helps promote ongoing company development
and secure strategic competitive advantages.
The five stages of Touchpoint Management
1.
TouchpointAudit (internal
perspective)
2.
3.
360º Touchpoint Set optimiAnalysis (external sation goals
perspective)
4.
Implement the
optimisation
goals
5.
Tracking
1. Touchpoint Audit
The relevant off- and online touchpoints for the
company and the industry are listed first. These
different touchpoints range from sales (point-ofsale or point-of-interaction), to classical mass
media, to indirect communication (public relations, word of mouth, etc,) and on to personal
one-to-one communication.
2. 360° Touchpoint Analysis
The precondition for optimising the entire process
is ensuring uniform measurement of the various
different sales and communication methods. To
evaluate the impact of the possible touchpoints
from the customer’s point of view, there is a second step to collect and statistically evaluate or
calculate the range and touchpoint value using
market research.
3. Set optimisation goals
Based on the strategy and positioning, the requirements for qualitative and quantitative adjustments can be established and potential savings
quantified. Activity Based Costing allows resources to be optimally directed to the different touchpoints or activities. It is even easy to extract recommendations for suitable mass media from the
touchpoint analysis.
4. Implement the optimisation goals
The central aim during implementation is to achieve optimal Touchpoint design. This is complemented by optimisation of the downstream processes
and mutli-channel mix for sales, marketing, communication and service.
5. Tracking
Tracking is used to evaluate and manage the performance of the strategy and activities.
Accelerom provides consulting and research
for comprehensive, impact-oriented brand and
marketing management.
Accelerom identifies growth potentials and provides advice on the development of integrated,
interdisciplinary multichannel-strategies, which
are designed to:
Accelerom AG
Technoparkstrasse 1
CH-8005 Zürich
www.accelerom.com
· strengthen brands
· increase the efficiency and impact of sales
and marketing communications, and
· raise customer retention levels.
Contact:
Christoph Spengler, founder
and Managing Director
Telefon +41 44 445 29 15
The approach extends from concept to implementation at both local and international levels.
Design by:
Hello AG,
Member of GfM
Agentur für Kommunikation, München
Schweizerische Gesellschaft
www.hello-muenchen.de
für Marketing
© 2009 Accelerom