If you’re wondering how many touchpoints before a sale is made, it’s more than you might think!
A touchpoint is any interaction that might influence how your customer feels about your product, brand, service or business. As an affiliate marketer, touchpoints are generally made through website content, video and email marketing messages.
On a website, a visitor only has a small window of opportunity to make a buying decision. This is why it’s so important to get website visitors onto your email list. From an email list, you can have many more touchpoints with your potential customers than you possibly could on a website.
After 10 minutes on a website, most of your visitors are gone, potentially forever! But once on your email list, you can follow up over weeks, months and even years and decades! This gives you many more opportunities to influence your audience through touchpoints – interactions where you can influence someone and build trust.
How Many Touchpoints Before A Sale?
According to research it can take from 6-8 touchpoints before a sale is made. However, it will differ across different businesses offering different services. It’s also going to depend on the leads you attract and the targeting of your marketing.
If you’re very specific about who your best performing potential customers are, it can be a lot less. (See how to know your target market). It also will depend on your marketing strategy.
Much of this data comes from businesses who follow up with sales calls to their leads. But with affiliate marketing, this doesn’t happen. Touchpoints for most affiliates refer to those interactions visitors have made on your website, and through your email marketing campaigns.
Still it’s important to know that most leads won’t immediately turn into customers from the get-go! This is useful because you know the follow up emails are vital. Or, if you’re calling prospects, you’ll need 6-7 interactions with them in order to make a sale, on average.
How Many Touchpoints Before A Sale: The Landscape Has Changed
Consumers are more immune to traditional advertising and sales methodologies today. They are more likely to do their own independent research about a particular product or brand before believing the “salesperson” selling them something. This is why email marketing is so useful for marketers. With email marketing you can offer value and give insight over a much longer period of time.
Rather than trying to sell directly to leads, you can build trust over the longer time period by offering value and answering questions which your email subscribers are likely to have. You can also address issues which are likely holding them from making a buying decision. This all comes down to knowing your customers. See customer avatar worksheet pdf for more on this.
Types Of Product
Of course your product has a huge bearing on how many touchpoints someone will need to buy something. If you’re selling a physical product from a website, a simple review might be enough to make a direct sale. That’s because a review website attracts an audience who is already looking for a specific item. A review catches someone at the last stage of their buying cycle. They just needed a little knowledge on the item before making the purchase. Then they buy it through the affiliate link.
If, on the other hand you’re selling a complicated item, such a digital business training course, it’s going to take a little longer to build up trust with your customer. Why should they trust you? If your emails provide useful information and try the help them, regardless of the sale, they are much more likely to trust you and buy from you. If you’re shoving a product down their neck from your first email, they will probably unsubscribe! At the very least they will take your emails with a pinch of salt, knowing you’re only after the sale!
Agressive Sales
Have you ever been in a shop browsing when a salesman comes over and tries to “help” you too much! How does it make you feel? Like a commodity, right! They just want their sales bonus. “Too pushy” sales people push people away instead of letting them choose on their own. You leave the shop and browse elsewhere where you’ll be left in peace!
In the internet age, people have changed their buying habits. They can go elsewhere and usually get it cheaper. As with email marketing, if you’re too pushy and “salesy” you can have the opposite effect to you want to achieve. It’s much better to offer huge value in your email marketing campaign, and help the customer – building trust. When you build trust with an email marketing campaign, you’re much more likely to have people open your emails.
When they know you only want to sell them something, they stop opening them because they know it’s of no value.
Summary
How many touchpoints before a sale can be made? Although the standard answer is between 6-7 touchpoints, this will vary across the board according to the marketing, customers, business and strategy of connection to customers. With an affiliate marketing business touchpoints are different to those which many physical businesses employ such as cold calling. With affiliate marketing those touchpoints are through email marketing and website or video content. So you may require more touchpoints in order to build trust when you aren’t physically speaking to a potential customer.
If your marketing is good though, and you are able to attract a very targeted audience, touchpoints should be less. The point is you should be able to improve your marketing methods as you go, and it’s important to remember that every customer is different. With email marketing, focus on providing value and building trust. See also the power of email marketing.