Points of contact. Simple Ideas to Improve Your Marketing

What is this?

How to work with it?

For what?

Read completely

What is this?
This is a notebook book (not to be confused with a folder book). New invention by Igor Mann!

How to work with it?
You read the "theory" and immediately take notes, and also perform practical tasks in specially designated fields.
Then you put together the thoughts of the book and your own ideas and implement them.
One or three iterations (cycles) - and your marketing and business will be unrecognizable! They get much, much better!

For what?
The workbook will help you organize your work on your touch points.
Contact points are a variety of situations and places where the client comes into contact with your company. This could be a website, a sign, documentation, business cards, a secretary’s voice, packaging, and so on.
99% of marketers don't put the touchpoint concept into practice. But in vain! It is here that clients make the key decision - to work with you or not.

In this book the authors:
systematize in the form of laws and observations all available knowledge about points of contact;
explain how and why different touchpoints affect your customers;
help you identify your touch points;
and finally they offer step by step plan working with them and improving them.
Read, write, analyze your touch points and learn to manage them. Your marketing will become more effective!

Who is this for?
For entrepreneurs, company executives and marketers.

From the author
Since 2002, when my first book, 100% Marketing, was published, I have been developing and popularizing the topic of contact points.
In my opinion, this is a greatly undervalued marketing asset.
Positioning, differentiation, segmentation, life cycle, marketing communications, marketing without a budget are considered in great detail, but contact points remain on the sidelines.
In my seminars I encourage (and listeners can attest to this): “Start your marketing at the touch points!”
Contact points were discussed in my books “Marketing Arithmetic for First Persons” and “Marketing Without a Budget.”
In our consulting projects, my partners and I at LeadMachine, Marketing Machine or Kongru always start our work with an audit of contact points.
In general, the topic is really important, necessary and eternal, but articles about points of contact began to appear only recently. There are no more than a couple of dozen worthwhile publications.
The impetus for writing this book was an article by my co-author Dmitry Turusin in the magazine "Company Management", in which the laws and consequences of contact points were formulated. Dmitry worked on this topic at the University of Edinburgh, devoting his undergraduate work to it.
I added to his materials a description of my own technology for working with contact points, we argued about some rules (I had no questions about the laws), diluted our observations with examples, interviewed drivers of contact points (unfortunately, there are still few of these specialists in our country ) - and, in my opinion, we succeeded great book with very high efficiency.
Study it carefully.
Analyze your touch points.
Think about the laws and observations that apply to your business.
We are confident that the book will pay for itself a thousandfold in the first week of using the concept of touch points and working on them.
Have fun reading and improving your touchpoints!
Take the first step and don't stop.
Our book will make this path easier for you.
Improve yourself.
There should be no excuses.

6th edition, expanded.

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* * *

Introduction

Since 2002, when my first book, 100% Marketing, was published, I have been developing and popularizing the topic of touch points.

In my opinion, this is a greatly undervalued marketing asset.

Positioning, differentiation, segmentation, life cycle, marketing communications, marketing without a budget are considered in great detail, but contact points remain on the sidelines.

In my seminars I say (and listeners can attest to this): “Start your marketing at the touch points!”

Contact points were discussed in my books “Marketing Arithmetic for First Persons” (2010) and “Marketing Without a Budget” (2011).

In our consulting projects, my partners and I at LeadMachine, Marketing Machine or Kongru always start our work with an audit of contact points.

In general, the topic is really important, necessary and eternal, but articles about points of contact began to appear only recently. There are no more than a couple of dozen official publications.

The impetus for writing this book was an article by my co-author Dmitry Turusin in the magazine “Company Management”, in which the laws and consequences of contact points were formulated. Dmitry worked on this topic at the University of Edinburgh, devoting his undergraduate work to it.

I added to his materials a description of my own technology for working with contact points, we argued about some rules (I had no questions about the laws), diluted our observations with examples, interviewed drivers of contact points (unfortunately, there are still few of these specialists in our country ) – and, in my opinion, we have an excellent book with very high efficiency.

Study it carefully.

Analyze your touch points.

Think about the laws and observations that apply to your business.

We are confident that the book will pay for itself a thousandfold in the first week of using the concept of touch points and working on them.

Have fun reading and improving your touchpoints!

Take the first step and don't stop.

Our book will make this path easier for you.

Improve yourself.

There should be no excuses.

Igor Mann

What are contact points?

Contact points are the numerous and varied situations, places and interfaces where the client comes into contact with the company.

Every time a customer contacts a company in any way, at any time, a touchpoint occurs.

At the point of contact, customers make critical decisions for your business:

Whether to start working with you or not;

Continue to cooperate with you or switch to your competitors.

Surprisingly, touchpoints are of no interest to marketing theorists, and therefore few marketers (practitioners) apply this concept.

Research in the field marketing communications, positioning, differentiation, marketing mix, segmentation are not so important (not at all important!) if work is not done with contact points.

To paraphrase Chekhov's hero, successful business all contact points must be perfect. If the company does not have required points contacts or they are bad, then there are no clients, no income, no business.

Every entrepreneur, company manager and marketer needs to know the points of contact and manage them correctly.

This is extremely important for business.

Points of contact are moments of truth.

The former head of Scandinavian Airlines, Jan Carlzon, seems to have pioneered the use of the term “moments of truth” (and he has a book of the same name – see Appendix 5).

By moments of truth, he means any contact during which the customer has the opportunity to express an opinion about the quality of service.

Jan Carlzon proclaimed: “We are not trying to make one thing 100% better. We want to make a thousand things 1% better.”

Following this principle, he transformed a struggling airline into one of the best in 22 months, contrary to the Theory of Constraints, which states that bottlenecks require improvement.

At the point of contact, the client may change his mind about working with you. At the point of contact, a competitor can bypass you (and immediately surpass you in revenue).

At the point of contact you can gain or lose a client, strengthen your relationship with him, confirm your high reputation or, conversely, disappoint him.

The book covers of the Mann, Ivanov and Ferber publishing house, which were designed by Tyoma Lebedev, have already become a textbook example.

White, bright, recognizable - they, as a point of contact, greatly contributed to increasing sales of the publisher’s “white” series and continue to do so.

Points of contact must be addressed.

And do it systematically.

Your job is to provide clear, emotionally powerful, and positive interactions at your touchpoints that will make them remember your company, tell others about it, and buy your products.

Points of contact: three laws

Back in 1993, Jack Trout and Al Ries, in their book “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing,” talked about the basic laws of marketing that they strongly recommended not to violate. Jack Trout is still convinced that these laws do not change either qualitatively or quantitatively.

But if they exist for marketing in general, then they can also exist for its individual tools.

Let's look at three laws that should guide your touch point marketing.

Law 1. Each entity (business, product or service, department or employee of a company) has more than one point of contact

If you see only one point of contact in the object you are improving, then you definitely (don’t go to the doctor!) should rest and a little later look at the object with a fresh look or ask your colleagues to help you find other points of contact.

Let us illustrate for clarity.

Business contact points:

Product contact points:

packaging (perhaps, just to appreciate Apple’s packaging, it’s worth purchasing something from this company’s products), layout, design, name, barcode, instruction manual, warranty card.

Service contact points:

title, presentation, booklet, customer reviews, cases, publications... and employees who offer the service.

Employee contact points:

height, build, smile, neat appearance, hairstyle, uniform, badge, posture, speech patterns.

Law 2. Contact points form contact chains

Any point of contact consists of several smaller points of contact, and those, in turn, of even smaller ones.

Contact points form a chain of contacts - this law should be known and used.

Law 3: Points of contact must be managed

If a company needs a result in some process, then there must be someone who will manage this process (plan, execute, control).

Working with touch points is no exception.

Start managing your touchpoints correctly and your marketing and business will become more effective.

For example, in the Atlant-M automobile holding there is an employee who is responsible for periodically assessing contact points, as well as their continuous improvement.

Does your company have such an employee? You will have problems.

Any law - be it the law of physics or the state - presupposes consequences, amendments and rules that explain and complement it.

If our book were a dissertation (Dmitry Turusin may continue to work on this topic), we would use the word “consequence” or “rule”.

But we will keep it simple.

Let's call what we discovered while working on this topic and the three laws simply observations and share them with our readers.

One observation - one short chapter.

This book structure will help you focus on the most interesting points related to touch points and work more effectively with them.

“Points of contact. Simple ideas to improve your marketing" / Igor Mann, Dmitry Turusin. – 2nd ed. – M.: Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, 2013. – 156 pp. – Review

You can know a lot
not knowing the most necessary.

L. Tolstoy

What is the most important thing in the world?
Button!

From A. Raikin's humoresque

Revelations of the marketing “button man”

“If you want the same quick result: then a dacha, a battery, food for 2 weeks - and go ahead! - And in two weeks you return with the manuscript, which you give to your colleagues for editorial editing and printing. Now I will try to always write like this" This is how Igor Mann describes his brilliant invention - a new method of writing books. (Some articles take me more than two weeks. I write books for years. I need to correct myself: write everything in a couple of weeks.)

So, gentlemen, meet another stunning “two-week-battery” wow piece by Mann: "We are confident that the book will pay for itself a thousandfold in the first week using the concept of contact points and working on them". Mann is confident that: “Bragging sells. And how!” If he means selling his boasts and fantasies in his books, then that's it. Unfortunately.

These fantasies are driven by those marketers who do not want and/or do not know how to think for the Client; those who, in the difficult craft of marketing, are engaged in a tireless search for “simple ideas”, solutions at the behest of a pike, a magic formula, a “silver bullet”. So when Mann writes that this book was expected, he is right. She has her own reader.

SO, what are points of contact (TC)? This is just a terminological idea: let's call these points of contact! Here is their full definition from Mann:

“Contact points are the numerous and varied situations, places and interfaces where the client comes into contact with the company. Every time a customer contacts a company in any way, at any time, there is a point of contact.”

Not a bad definition. But what does it actually give?

I have always been touched by lovers of idle terminological exercises:

Let's call all living things the biosphere.- Let's.

Let's call the chemistry of radioactive substances radiochemistry.- Let's.

Let's say "marketer" instead of "marketer".- Let's.

Let's, let's, let's...

Unable to create anything productive, some “marketers” focus entirely on glossaries, terminology discussions, word creation and other trifles. All this is somehow forgivable for marketing academics, but for a person claiming to be a practical marketer, or “marketer”, this is... well, you understand.

Igor Mann simply loves to create meaningless words: phishing, wow marketing, money writing, Client Mann iya, etc. He manages to discuss an empty topic in almost every text: marketing or marketing.

People say: even if you call it a pot, just don’t put it in the oven. I would leave a couple of dozen terms in marketing. No more.

At the beginning of the book you will encounter the following masterpiece of logic: “Back in 1993, Trout and Rice in the book “22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” brought out basic laws of marketing."

Mann does not understand the difference between the words “infer” and “declare without evidence.” I comment on this “conclusion” of Trout in my reviews on "22 immutables":

“Rice and Trout explain the creation of their epoch-making code of marketing laws with a dashing syllogism: “If there are laws of nature, why shouldn’t there be laws of marketing?”... There are immutable laws in nature... But excuse me, gentlemen, this does not prove in any way the presence of some immutable laws in such areas as management, philosophy, medicine... or... marketing!!!”

“If laws exist for all marketing, then they can exist for its tools.”

So Mann took Trout's stupidity, multiplied it by his own stupidity, and got stupidity squared. When will there be stupidity in a cube? We're waiting, sir.

Mann is attracted by the status of a “marketer in law.” But, alas, Mann’s declared “Laws” of TC are banal and, excuse me, ridiculous.

Mann laments: “Surprisingly, marketing theorists are not at all interested in points of contact. and therefore few marketers (practitioners) apply this concept.”

A strange conclusion: almost all marketing texts talk about such “situations, places and interfaces”. But usually at the end, when it is clear what exactly at these points should be conveyed to the Client. In particular, in the section “Marketing Audit” in the book "Marketing Thinking" I am writing about one important category of TC:

“A lot can be learned from the analysis of the Client’s first contact with the object in question:

– The client saw your product on the shelf for the first time

– The client called you on the phone for the first time

– The client entered your site for the first time

– The client received your business card from you

– The client took a fleeting, indifferent glance at your billboard or magazine advertisement.

However, my experience in consulting and training shows that analyzing such situations only produces results when the marketer has a sophisticated marketing mindset. Igor Mann, alas, does not have it.

This book will help you take inventory of various and small TCs, often meaningless, but it will not teach you how to competently create selling websites, advertising materials, packaging and other important marketing things - strategically important TCs.

Mann calls: “Start marketing with touch points!” In no case! They need complete marketing analysis! And we need to start with content contacts - from the question, what exactly should be conveyed to the Client in these TCs? The answer to this question can only be given by a thorough marketing audit. By the way, he will also suggest effective TCs that are unique to the given case. Without an audit, you can only work with minor technical complexes, in particular office ones, and even then not always.

Starting marketing with TCs is like starting medicine with hospitals (points of contact with patients) rather than with good doctors; education from schools (points of contact with students), and not from good teachers, etc.

I'm tired of saying that Mann completely misunderstands the age-old truth: as with all things in marketing, content is more important than form; the cart must follow the horse. In this book there is only a cart, and an empty one. And the horse (TC content, selling information) grazes elsewhere, for example, in the texts of Drucker, Levitt, Ogilvy, Caples, Abraham...

In any case, it is completely unreasonable to turn the concept of TC into an analogue of A. Raikin’s “buttons” and claim that all marketing revolves around TC: I took an inventory of my TC, appointed a so-called “driver” for TC, created robot-like circuits and instructions and... business in Hat.

“At the point of contact, customers accept critical decisions for your business:

Whether to start working with you or not;

Continue to cooperate with you or switch to your competitors."

Most often this is not the case. Why?

Let's imagine an ordinary person in a supermarket, where thousands of products look at him from the shelves, some of which he habitually moves into a cart; or in a store where he tries on dozens of items of clothing or shoes.

How many names of manufacturing companies does he remember? And anyway, how many manufacturers of specific products can the average person name?

How can a person make any decisions regarding a company if he simply does not know its name?

How often, in these days of “commoditization,” can he say how one sunflower oil (and hundreds of other products) differs from competing products? And so on and so forth.

The book pays a lot of attention to the Client in the office. Of course, you need to strive to ensure that his stay in it is comfortable and productive - this should be done by internal marketing - but it is naive to believe that many of the “points of contact” described in the book will seriously affect his desire to continue or start collaborating with you. This will most likely be influenced by more serious things, such as the content of the negotiations.

As for small TCs, in my experience, problems here are solved by a simple game, which I call “let’s play the Client.” This is an experiment, mental or real, in which you try to imagine yourself as your Client and see everything through his eyes in an office or store.

Putting yourself in the Client’s shoes, ask yourself questions - what does he need; how to make sure that he gets what he wants, and not just gets it, but gets it faster and more conveniently?

Let's take a customer in a store. A real store begins a few meters before the entrance, with signs, display windows, pillars - all this should draw the Client into the funnel called the store. Enter your store and, imagining yourself as a Customer, go all the way to purchase and, if necessary, to delivery.

Here the Client enters. Are the steps on the stairs slipping? How friendly is the security guard? What does the Client’s gaze immediately rest on? How quickly does he receive primary information: where is everything located, etc.? Is the store conveniently laid out? How quickly does he get to the department that interests him? Do pointers help him? Is he comfortable pushing the cart down the aisle? Are the price tags convenient (in many Russian stores they are terrifying)? Does point-of-sale advertising work? Does he understand your advertisements? What sounds and smells does he perceive? Does he like, for example, the thieves' tune that they play in the store? Will an experienced, friendly sales consultant approach him? How long does he have to wait at the cash register? How long will it take him to make a routine purchase? If the cashier made a mistake, will they apologize to him after the surly guard shovels the contents of his bag? If the Client is dissatisfied, can he quickly and easily convey his dissatisfaction to management?…

Another level of questions: Is there delivery? Is there parking? Is there somewhere to leave the child? Is there somewhere to eat? Is there a toilet? Can the Client extract something useful for himself from the store’s website, can he buy through the website?

Such an experiment requires a marketing mindset. The basic technique of this thinking is the ability to ask yourself a lot of useful questions from the Client.

Almost any statement in the book deserves critical analysis, but... in short, what follows is only selective:

Contents of the site.– Mann repeats many times that the site is TC, but he does not talk about what the content of the site should be! In my review of "Marketing 100%" I noted that the websites of his two companies (Lucent and Avaya) shine with “eggheadedness” (language incomprehensible to most Clients). And the Client shines there with his absence!

Employee contact points. – “Height, build, smile, neat appearance, hairstyle, uniform, badge, posture, speech patterns.”

- Charming! But such “little things” as customer focus, intelligence, professionalism, patience, product knowledge, efficiency, etc. are missing.

Single point contact points. - They supposedly “must delight, surprise and inspire the buyer, push him to buy, be remembered, do everything so that they choose you and your products.”

- Mr. Mann, are you serious? Do you really think that all the Customer needs to make a purchase is admiration and memorization?

Mann has two points in this book: an answering machine and business cards - incredibly important things in this age digital technologies!:

Autoresponder. – “In one company, the answering machine says: “Company “A”. Leave a message if you need anything from us."

And in the other: “Company “B”. Good night! Unfortunately, we have to go home, but in the morning, as soon as we return, we will call you back immediately. Therefore, please leave your contact number and introduce yourself so that we know how to contact you. Good dreams! You don’t have to call our competitors - they have an answering machine, but they don’t listen to it.”

- Amazing! But... what percentage of callers will listen to the second option to the end?

“There is no answering machine - and the company does not receive enough clients.”

- Mr. Mann, are you serious? In this age of email and websites, how often do people call someone, especially at odd hours? Think back to the last time you did this.

Business cards. – “A few seconds - and contact is either established or not.”

- Is it wrong? When received, any business card necessarily establishes a contact - it has the name of its owner on it. Then, perhaps, due to the shortcomings of the business card, it may be thrown away, but at the first meeting, when it is held in hands, it works Always. If, however, it can be read.

“A business card can be made from metal or turned into a discount card.”

- Anything is possible, but...

On page 111 of the book there is a luxurious picture - a kind of map of working with business cards. This is something!

There are the most unimaginable positions here: “how does he pass it – into his hands – with one/two hands?”, “What does he say?” etc. But at the same time, the most important positions are missing: is the company profile indicated (due to the lack of such information, business cards usually end up in the basket within a week)?; do we read the text?; Is it possible to write something on a business card (this is customary in the West)?... (In preparation for a trip to the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, taking into account some frivolity of the audience, I created business card, doing the work of “signing” for the recipient. This amused many, but... is it really that important!)

Mann's dictionary will delight representatives of advertising creativity: “wow!”, “cool!”, “class!”, “cool!”, “super!”, “cool!”, (I must add “awesome!”), or or “sucks!” Mann is simply sure that the behavior of your sales curve for building materials, equipment, spare parts... bread, water, mayonnaise... banking products... (hereinafter everywhere) depends mainly on your ability to cause a wow reaction in the Client with your business cards and other tinsel.

Don't believe me?

Mann talks with delight in several places about how he and one of his “machines” did an amazing job at Atlant-M: everyone there allegedly wrote boiling water from their wow “buttons”:

“The site was named the best in the industry by specialized journalists and IT specialists.”– Go to this site.

“Business cards overwhelmed secretaries and decision makers on the spot (we are not exaggerating).”– What happened after they woke up from the “on the spot”?

“Legends began to circulate about gifts...”– I have already said that the talent of a mass entertainer died in Mann.

– But... how much did all this affect sales? Mann is modestly silent about this.

“Bottom line: “wow” touchpoints pay off quickly and always».

Mann admires Martin Lindstrom's goofy opus "Brand Sense". It talks about the need to use as many human senses as possible. It seems to be correct, but Lindstrom and Mann are taking everything to the point of absurdity. From Mann:

“7:0 – if you use all your senses(Mann has 7) , and your worst competitor uses nothing. So what's your score?

- Yes, if the competitor doesn’t have a job not for any sense organ The client (not for a single one!), then... he is invisible and inaudible.

“What would it be like to play in bookstores so that sales of books from the publishing houses “Mann, Ivanov and Ferber” and “Alpina Business Books” also increased by eight percent?..”

- “You don’t need a knife for a fool, you’ll tell him a lot of lies, and do whatever you want with him.”

Unable to highlight the main thing, Mann fills all his texts with small things, for example, this:

“For example, we take what every company has - an agreement for the provision of services (supply of products). It is printed in small, unreadable font. Made in Word format. There is no formatting, there is no design at all. Commas are missing.

And your competitors have: a large, easy-to-read font; excellent document design; PDF format; not a single mistake. Now I, as a client, evaluate your contracts and invoices. Obviously: 0:4. Your competitors are winning."

– Nobody argues: it is desirable that the documents are literate and look neat. However, it is even more desirable that their content be professional. By the way, for some reason Mann is sure that the pdf format is better than the Word format, although each format has its pros and cons.

The following examples of wow marketing require no comment:

“If the courier of a company dealing food delivery, will be dressed in a white apron and chef’s hat, and the order will be originally packaged, this will certainly cause a “wow” effect.

Business card in the form bank card or a metro pass – which is right for your business?

An employee of one collection company, typing to her colleagues Business Cards in the form of a black circle, instantly launched an association with a black pirate mark.

Commercial proposal in the form of a film (with a spy plot). Presentation by a quartet.

The call taker is a retired officer with a clear voice.

Color print for company documents, Enter immediately shows that the company works unconventionally and brightly. You should have seen the business cards of the employees of this company! Each one is a masterpiece!”

– And not a word about such a trifle as sales. Why, exactly?

It’s funny that Mann also refers to the TC as the Clients themselves and external factors:

"Among external factors We can note the strengthening of general competition, the emergence of a new bright player (raising the bar of competition or changing the rules of the game), changes in legislation and other factors of the PESTEL models and Porter’s five forces.”

– I wish we could get a couple of examples from our guru of how Porter’s five forces increase sales!

This little book is replete with classifications, instructions and examples of supposed practicality, like all Mann's texts.

It is distinguished by unsystematicism, simplicity, banality, eclecticism and Mann's traditional inability to distinguish the main from the secondary, and even from the tenfold. Claiming the status of a customer-centricity guru, Mann talks about the most important thing in marketing, the need to look at everything through the eyes of the Client, in the middle of the book - just a few lines. In numerous lists, important, minor and insignificant points are separated by commas.

This book is like a TC from the publishing house "MYTH"

Mann: “We think the book turned out well.”

What's happened good book? By what criteria to evaluate its quality?

Content comes first, of course. – For this I would give a two plus (plus a couple of good examples from literature). And then there are only units.

What is described in the “Sneaky Prices” section in my article fully applies to this book “Myths about “MYTH”. How “MYTH” is destroying the brains of Russian marketers"

Ostap Bender knew “four hundred relatively honest ways of taking money from the population.” It seems that the publishing house "MYTH" is striving for this ideal. Most of Mann's books are designed in such a way that the reader pays a lot of money for air. So in this book (156 pp.) there is hardly enough text for a large article. At the same time, it uses several new “relatively fair methods”:

1. Wide margins and entire pages filled with dotted lines under the sign “My ideas” - this takes up 30 percent of the space.

2. 26 full page meaningless drawings designed for who knows who (!?). I will cite some of them. Try to guess what they illustrate.

Well, what do you think these graphic masterpieces are about?

3. Mass of empty full page lists.

4. At the end of the book, as usual, there are many pages advertising (for the buyer’s money, of course) “The most useful books from the publishing house “Mann, Ivanov and Ferber”” etc.

So, don't be discouraged, reader.

It is reassuring that this masterpiece has an atypically modest price tag - a measly 650 rubles.

Conclusion

Maestro Igor Mann is persistently trying to turn practical marketing into a kingdom of distorting mirrors.

I have already said that his “simple ideas” and “quick marketing” are very impressive because he does not want and cannot think. If you, my dear reader, belong to this inglorious cohort, then this book is for you.

If you are really interested in how to become a useful employee of a company, earning it a profit, then read at least a couple of books by Drucker, Levitt, Ogilvy, Caples, Abraham. I talk about this in more detail in my message to Young Marketers in " Myths about “MYTH” (“Mann, Ivanov and Ferber”). How “MYTH” destroys the brains of Russian marketers.”

P.S. You won’t believe it, but Igor Mann asked me to write this review. Before this, even before the publication of this book, he asked me to comment on it. Naturally, he ignored my comments.

Interesting wow-comrade, isn't it?

What are contact points?

Contact points are the numerous and varied situations, places and interfaces where the client comes into contact with the company. Every time a customer contacts a company in any way, at any time, a touchpoint occurs.

At the point of contact, customers make critical decisions for your business:

whether to start working with you or not;
continue to cooperate with you or switch to your competitors.

Surprisingly, touchpoints are of no interest to marketing theorists, and therefore few marketers (practitioners) apply this concept. Research in the field of marketing communications, positioning, differentiation, marketing mix, segmentation is not so important (not at all important!) if work is not carried out on touch points.

To paraphrase Chekhov's character, in a successful business, all touch points must be excellent. If a company does not have the necessary contact points or they are bad, then there are no customers, no income, no business. Every entrepreneur, company manager and marketer needs to know the points of contact and manage them correctly.

This is extremely important for business.

Points of contact are moments of truth. Former Scandinavian Airlines CEO Jan Carlzon appears to have pioneered the use of the term “moments of truth.” By moments of truth, he means any contact during which the customer has the opportunity to express an opinion about the quality of service. Jan Carlzon proclaimed: “We are not trying to make one thing 100% better. We want to make a thousand things 1% better.”

Following this principle, he transformed a struggling airline into one of the best in 22 months, contrary to the Theory of Constraints, which states that bottlenecks require improvement.

At the point of contact, the client may change his mind about working with you. At the point of contact, a competitor can bypass you (and immediately surpass you in revenue). At the point of contact you can gain or lose a client, strengthen your relationship with him, confirm your high reputation or, conversely, disappoint him.

The book covers of the Mann, Ivanov and Ferber publishing house, which were designed by Tyoma Lebedev, have already become a textbook example. White, bright, recognizable - they, as a point of contact, greatly contributed to increasing sales of the publisher’s “white” series and continue to do so.

Points of contact must be addressed. And do it systematically. Your job is to provide clear, emotionally powerful, and positive interactions at your touchpoints that will make them remember your company, tell others about it, and buy your products.

Points of contact: three laws

Let's look at three laws that should guide your touch point marketing.

Law 1. Each entity (business, product or service, department or employee of a company) has more than one point of contact

Let us illustrate for clarity.

Business contact points: website, office, sign, documentation, advertising, comparative cars, printing, Commercial offer, the secretary's voice... and food.

Product contact points: packaging (perhaps, just to appreciate Apple’s packaging, it’s worth purchasing something from this company’s products), layout, design, name, barcode, instruction manual, warranty card.

Service contact points: title, presentation, booklet, customer reviews, cases, publications... and employees who offer the service.

Employee contact points: height, build, smile, neat appearance, hairstyle, uniform, badge, posture, speech patterns.

Law 2. Contact points form contact chains

Any point of contact consists of several smaller points of contact, and those, in turn, of even smaller ones. Contact points form a chain of contacts - this law should be known and used.

Law 3: Points of contact must be managed

If a company needs a result in some process, then there must be someone who will manage this process (plan, execute, control).

Working with touch points is no exception. Start managing your touchpoints correctly and your marketing and business will become more effective.

For example, in the Atlant-M automobile holding there is an employee who is responsible for periodically assessing contact points, as well as their continuous improvement.

Does your company have such an employee? You will have problems.

Observation 1. Any object (product, service, company, employee) has a unique set of contact points

Any object (business, product, service, company employee, website) has unique points of contact.

Just as people have different fingerprints and retinas, business objects have different touch points. In other words, each company and each of its elements has its own set of contact points.

There are universal touchpoints that are found in almost all businesses. For example, many companies place advertisements, send commercial offers to potential clients and partners, print promotional materials, create websites, create groups in in social networks, hire employees, rent and decorate offices, connect answering machines and use call centers.

But, as they say, the devil is in the details: one company differs from another both in the number of contact points (let's say the company has an answering machine, but its competitor does not), and in their quality. In one company, the answering machine says: “Company “A”. Leave a message if you need anything from us."

Let's look at a few examples.

Your commercial offer has the same points of contact:

appeal;
layout;
visualization;
discount system;
contacts.

And your site is different:

address (for example, www.igor-mann.ru);
domain zone (say, .ru, .com or .org);
favicon (a small picture that appears next to the name of the site when you see it in the browser line);
contact page;

A parameter such as “is it easy or difficult to reach a company” is broken down into the following points of contact:

telephone number (easy or difficult to remember the first time);
how quickly (after what dial tone) they pick up the phone;
the secretary's voice (it is important that the voice is pleasant, so that it conveys an attentive and friendly attitude towards the caller);
gender of the secretary (this may be a “trick” of the company);
words of greeting (cf.: “Hello” and “ Good morning! Company "A". How can we help you?").

Determine what contact points you have and break them down into their components (we'll talk about how to do this later).

Observation 2: Points of contact can be positive, neutral or negative

The customer's touch point or touch points can cause your customers and other representatives to target audiences different reactions.

Positive reaction: the customer likes your point of contact. He noticed her and responded to her positively and emotionally. He's delighted. He is delighted. His feelings can be expressed in exclamations: “cool!”, “wow!”, “wow!”, “cool!”, “great!”, “super!”, “amazing!”, “great!”, “cool.” !”, “finally!”, “give it!”. Let's call this reaction “wow”, and the points of contact that cause it - “wow” contact points. We specifically introduce such a gradation. It’s more categorical, tougher, clearer and clearer, and much better remembered.

Neutral reaction: the client did not pay attention to your point of contact, did not notice it, and ignored it. His possible reaction: “so-so”, “like everyone else”, “normal”, “average”, “will do”, “on par”, “as I expected”, “ok”. Let's call this reaction “average.” We choose this word for your own good. Few people will want average touch points. At first glance, a neutral point of contact does not harm the business in any way, but in reality the company will at least lose opportunities that it could realize with the help of the “wow” effect.

Negative reaction: the customer is angry, frustrated, frustrated, frustrated, exhausted by your touchpoints. He's shocked. He's angry. He gets stressed from your points of contact. His possible reaction: “sucks”, “catastrophe”, “what are they thinking?”, “what are they thinking?”, “do they have a head?”, “that sucks”, “quiet horror”, “loud horror”, “a nightmare!”, “Where are they looking?”, “Does anyone else even go to them?”, “I won’t set foot here again.” (Surprisingly, we found the most words and phrases to describe this reaction, although we used only normative vocabulary. A peculiarity of Russia?) Let's call this reaction “sucks”, and the points of contact - sucks (cruel, but you definitely don’t want to hear it ).

Every time a client hears “sucks,” he cringes. But who are we going to feel sorry for? By feeling sorry for ourselves in business and turning a blind eye to shortcomings, we risk eventually facing big problems.

Based on this, you should try:

Create “wow” points of contact.
Eliminate loose contact points.
Upgrading mediocre contact points to “wow” status.

One of the most interesting orders for consulting in “Marketing Machine” sounded like this: “Give us a “wow-5”:

"wow" - commercial offer,
"wow" presentation for the client,
"wow" - a gift,
"wow" business card
and a “wow” site.”

The customer was from the b2b market, where the “wow” factor is almost never used - the courage of the head of this company should be especially noted. It was very interesting for us to work with such an order (our colleagues from LeadMachine worked with the site), and the customer was very pleased! The site was named the best in the industry by specialized journalists and IT specialists. Business cards overwhelmed secretaries and decision makers on the spot (we are not exaggerating). Legends began to circulate about gifts...

We cannot provide statistics on the effectiveness of commercial proposals and presentations, but the result was very, very positive.

Conclusion:“Wow” touch points pay off quickly and always. (Unfortunately, we cannot indicate the name of this company: the customer asked for anonymity so that he could enjoy the effect of using “wow” tools longer. In Russia, a country where your every step is instantly repeated by a competitor, there are two ways: to spark the “wow” - techniques or being modest. But this is a topic for another book.)

Observation 3: Some companies have missed touchpoints.

We talked about how important it is to see all points of contact. Overlooked, missing touchpoints can be a problem for a business. There is no answering machine - and the company does not receive enough clients. There is no website - and those who actively use the Internet are no longer your clients. The employee does not have a business card with him - and the conversation he had with potential client, remained a conversation. The interested interlocutor has no contacts and will not be able to contact your company.

The moral of this observation is simple: missing a touchpoint can be as bad for a business as a missed call in a horror movie. Find something important that you don’t already have and “turn it on.”

Observation 4: Touchpoints vary in importance.

This is obvious, but it’s better to remind you again. In life, many people either grab on to everything in a row, or take on the simplest things. But you need to focus on the most important (and often difficult) things. It’s the same in business (and it’s clear why, because people do it). Let's take, for example, a company in the food sales (distribution) market.

Its points of contact are sales staff, the office (and especially the demo corner with products), commercial offer, price list, presentations for decision makers, advertising brochure, website, reception secretary, answering machine. Everything is important, no doubt, but something on this list is critically necessary, and something can be done without. Life will force you to prioritize. But it’s better if you think about it yourself, and as early as possible.

The importance of the contact point depends on many factors:

level of competition in the market;
market size and saturation;
company size;
management team level;
the degree of demand of customers and their loyalty to the company.

And not only! A particular point of contact may become more or less important depending on time (seasonality, life cycle stage).

For example, for a startup, a good commercial proposal is, without exaggeration, a matter of life and death, but for large company, which has been operating on the market for 20 years, it has not played a decisive role for a long time. Observation 4 will be very useful to you when it comes to technology for working with contact points.

Observation 5: Points of contact are short term and long term.

More precisely, customer interaction with your company can be short-term (a second, a few seconds) and long-term (a minute, an hour, a day, a week). We will not introduce the concept of medium-term contact points - but in scientific research it would be difficult to avoid such a temptation.

Examples of short-term touchpoints:

business card (a few seconds - and the contact is either established or not);
outdoor advertising (it is believed that drivers have 3–10 seconds to look at it);
the secretary's greeting (hardly in any company it lasts more than 10 seconds);
a sign on or at the door (they often don’t pay attention to it - unless, of course, you come before opening: “Lord, they only open in half an hour!”), at the end of the working day or during lunch hours; but you can also have a sign make “wow” - ask us how);
product packaging.

Examples of long-term touch points:

Short-term points should create a “wow” effect, be remembered and hooked. Long-term - to be useful, effective, functional, non-irritating, to remain “long-lasting” or, conversely, as in the case of music on call hold, to be shortened. How long will the client remember the name of your company? Some touchpoints appear and die like ephemeral butterflies, while others may outlive the company itself (most often this happens with names and brands, as well as souvenirs).

I have a knife. A Swiss knife with the mark of a Swiss company, which changed its name twice in 20 years. Maybe he will change it again - the knife is eternal, the company name is printed conscientiously, the point of contact is for life! The service life of contact points can be extended in various ways when necessary. The video will live longer if it is posted on YouTube or RuTube; presentation - if you post it in SlideShare. A business card can be made of metal or turned into a discount card - in this case, the likelihood that it will end up in the trash bin is sharply reduced. We can use the "wow" factor - it almost always makes us return to what we saw, copy it and share the "wow" experience with others.

Observation 6. Points of contact are momentary and repetitive.

When customers contact your company, they are actually contacting one of its points. There are one-time touchpoints and points that customers will touch again and again.

Examples of one-time contact points:

price tag in the store;
package ( important note: the shelf life of some packages, made, for example, in the form of a container, is much longer than their contents);
table with technical characteristics product - looked, compared, switched;
instructions for using the product - assembled, turned on, put away and hope that you won’t need it anymore.

Repetitive contact points:

delivery service employees, especially if you constantly use the services of this supplier (here we cannot fail to mention the Enter company - use the services of their couriers and F1 service employees, it is an unforgettable experience!);
calls to the call center;
technical inspection;
company advertising;
blog news;
mailings.

Both one-time and recurring touchpoints are important to a company, but which should you focus on first? The correct answer is both. One-time contact points should delight, surprise and inspire the buyer, push him to purchase, be remembered, and do everything to make them choose you and your products. Repetitive touchpoints should maintain and enhance the “wow” effect, keeping the customer coming back again and again.

Observation 7: There are offline and online touchpoints

Businesses are increasingly moving entirely or in parts from offline to online. Naturally, points of contact also “migrate” to the online world or are born in it.

The main online contact points include (the list is incomplete, but gives an idea of the scope and directions):

search results: what they write about your company and your products in Yandex, Google; what photos are on Flickr; what video content is posted on YouTube; what presentations are posted on SlideShare;
advertising: contextual, banner, etc.;
websites: companies, products; third companies (for example, if you sell on Ozon.ru, BoffoBooks! or AppStore);
social networks: the main questions here are about how and in what social networks the company is represented;
blogs: companies; top managers of the company and its employees; not associated with the company;
forums: general, specialized;
encyclopedias: in particular, mention of the company, its managers or products in Wikipedia;
viruses: from a company, from a fan, from a dissatisfied client;
means of communication: Email, instant messengers, Skype, ICQ, GTalk.

Online, as offline, touchpoints are broken down into components. For example, a company website includes:

address (www.mann-ivanov-ferber.ru, or m-i-f.ru, or knigomat.ru);
domain zone (.ru, .com or .рф);
favicon;
download speed;
landing page.

And this is where it all begins!

If you would like to receive full list online contact points and their assessment, as well as recommendations for their improvement, contact the LeadMachine company (website leadmachine.ru). In the company's practice, there are examples of a tenfold increase in conversion. Points of contact make all the difference!

Email Contact Points:

recipient's name (what comes before "dog") - compare: nikolay.perevezetsevskiy@... (the probability of writing the address without an error is close to zero) and np...;
mailbox address (what comes after the “dog”) - compare: @avaya.com and @mail.ru; (My full email address for the publisher is, admittedly, tricky: [email protected], but when I dictate it or write it down for someone, I write it shorter: [email protected])
following the rules of etiquette and the Russian language (nobody canceled them in electronic correspondence);
signature or auto-signature;
auto-response (is there one and what kind).

And this is also just the beginning.

Online content is varied: videos, animations, texts, audio files, drawings, maps, charts, diagrams, comics, infographics, links, photographs, 3D objects, presentations. And all these are your points of contact! In general, any business is a contact business, even if it goes online.

Observation 8: Each touchpoint has its own life cycle.

The life cycle is the path that any product or service takes from the “market entry” stage through “growth” and “saturation” to the “death” stage. Contact points also have their own life cycle.

The majority of e-touch points (in other words, points related to the Internet, be it presence on social networks, mobile applications etc.).

Most traditional contact points are in the “saturation” stage. In the “falling” stage - faxes, business cards, printed advertising materials, mailing lists, exhibitions, podcasts (although a couple of years ago they were very popular), IVR (voice prompts from the telephone system, for example: “To reach the accounting department, please press "2"").

Is it possible to name points of contact that have become a thing of the past? First of all, teletype and fax mailings come to mind. The development of the Network and Internet technologies will undoubtedly bring many more points of contact to the grave. Be prepared for this.

Observation 9. Points of contact are interconnected with our feelings

Humans have five senses: taste, smell, vision, hearing and touch (tactile sensations). And all of them can be used at your touch points. Martin Lindstrom's book, Brand Sense, provides research demonstrating the importance of sensory channels.

Vision comes first (58%).

In second place is the sense of smell (45%).

In third place is hearing (41%).

In fourth place is taste (31%).

And the sense of touch (25%) closes the top five.

Vision

This is our everything. The main channel that helps make decisions. According to the London Institute of Design and Art, 83% of information enters the human brain through the visual perception channel. When working with contact points, we must use 100% vision (don't be confused by the above 83%).

The price list can be printed on yellow rather than white paper. Make the company sign in the form not of a sign, but of a photo frame with changing images. Hire employees - former professional athletes, whose posture and figure are pleasing to the eyes of customers.

Smell

“Ugh, it stinks!” “Wow, it smells so good!” The difference in perception is obvious, and purchasing behavior can be predicted based on these reactions.

The sense of smell, as they recently wrote in Maxim Detox magazine (it was a good magazine, but stopped publishing), is important even for choosing a partner - at least that’s what girls say in the study.

A few examples from Western practice: the smell of freshly baked bread increases the number of spontaneous purchases by tens of percent, and the smell of coffee and chocolate in offices creates a businesslike and positive mood.

Taste

Not all companies have the opportunity to play on this feeling. But whoever can is obliged to use this chance to the fullest!

Hearing

So important in marketing that it can probably be put in second place after vision. Actively used by many companies. The tempo of background music affects service, the amount of expenses, as well as the speed and direction of movement of customers in stores and restaurants.

Let's say the Payana company (which represents unique MVT shoes in Russia) has its own “radio station”: upbeat music and funny advertising are heard near all the stores in the chain. Or, for example, French melodies were launched in a supermarket - and sales of French wine increased by 8%. What would it be like to play in bookstores so that sales of books from the publishing houses “Mann, Ivanov and Ferber” and “Alpina Business Books” also increased by eight percent?..

Women love with their ears. What other reasons should we give so that you do not ignore hearing when working with contact points?

Touch (tactile sensations)

There are two aspects to this. For the blind, this is the main replacement for vision; they read thanks to tactile sensations. For sighted people, the sense of touch can also add sharpness to sensations - for example, iPhone, iPad and MacBook. Books from the Mann, Ivanov and Ferber publishing house (and one of them is now in front of you) are also pleasant to hold in your hands - we tried.

Another example with paper. UK supermarket chain Asda removes packaging from rolls toilet paper various brands so that visitors can taste it by touch. Sales increased sharply.

Sense of humor

Make the client laugh, smile, lift his spirits - in our cynical, pessimistic country it will be “wow”. The easiest way to use humor is to send out a newsletter to clients with jokes of the day or post emoticons. According to studies, residents of megacities really lack sun (high pollution, tall buildings).

One of our clients, the international automobile holding Atlant-M, approached this problem creatively. Small stands with the image of a smiling sun were installed in auto centers: I took a look and received a lot of positive emotions!

In another company that we consulted, it is customary to start the day with a meeting of the sales department. The program contains yesterday's results, a plan for the day, news - and from each employee an anecdote, a funny phrase or story. Positive in the morning and in reserve for meetings with clients. It is no coincidence that the corporate motto of this company is “It’s a pleasure to do business with us.”

Crowd feeling

A person goes where other people go. This is why we try to get into a crowded restaurant and buy what is already in demand.

Create a crowd effect at your touch points, a sense of demand, and customers will flock to you.

One owner of a business center urgently needed to rent it out to tenants. But no one wanted to move into the empty building. The owner allowed those who lived nearby or came to shop in neighboring stores to leave their cars in the parking lot belonging to the business center, turned on the lights in the office in the evenings - in general, imitated the filling of the building. It worked! Tenants reached out.

Summarize.

7:0 - if you use all your senses, and your worst competitor uses none. So what's your score?

Observation 10: Points of contact can be “live”

We do not mean turtles or fish in an office terrarium or aquarium (although in one of the offices we saw branded turtles), not employees (security guards, secretaries, sales managers and couriers, although we have already noted that this is important), but clients .

Leaving a store or office, or even standing in line at the checkout, the customer is a “walking” point of contact expressing his feelings and emotions. If they (clients) are positive, good. If they are neutral, think about what you can do to make them positive.

Clue: the most simple ways- sincere smiles of your employees, bright decoration of your offices and stores. If they are negative, they need to be extinguished (emotions, of course, not the clients). Queues are annoying. They need to be fought. There are special techniques and methods for this.

Observation 11. Important points of contact should have “chips”

1) your customer frequently interacts with some of your touch points,

2) you have business-critical contact points,

3) at points of contact you are very similar to your competitors,

then why not enhance the impression of contact points with something unusual, bright and memorable?

For a spicy sensation, add spices. Let's call them “tricks” - bright, noticeable, memorable properties. If the courier of a food delivery company is dressed in a white apron and chef's hat, and the order is originally packaged, this will certainly cause a “wow” effect. A business card in the form of a bank card or a metro pass - which is right for your business?

An employee of one collection company, having printed business cards in the form of a black circle to her colleagues, instantly launched an association with the black pirate mark.

Commercial proposal in the form of a film (with a spy plot). Presentation by a quartet. The call taker is a retired officer with a clear voice. Color printing for Enter company documents immediately shows that the company works unconventionally and brightly. You should have seen the business cards of the employees of this company! Each one is a masterpiece!

The books of the “white” series of the publishing house “Mann, Ivanov and Ferber” are numbered (pay attention to the spine); on the front title there is a place to write the name and contact information of the owner. The list goes on and on!

In particular, “chips” can be found:

on the websites of companies from industries related to yours;
in books on business;
in professional and industry magazines;
on blogs dedicated to a specific topic (for example, POS materials or Internet marketing);
by organizing a competition to collect ideas among employees, clients or partners.

This observation can be formulated a little differently: if the point of contact is important to you, then it is better to find a “chip” or “chips” for it. You can’t spoil the porridge with oil, and the contact points can’t be spoiled with “chips.”

Rice E., Trout J. 22 immutable laws of marketing. M.: AST, 2005

Pecha-kucha (from Japanese chatter) is a methodology for presenting short reports. The speaker shows 20 slides, with 20 seconds allocated for each slide.

Lindstrom M. Brand Sense. Touching the five senses to create outstanding brands. M.: Eksmo, 2006.

Do you want to quickly and easily improve your business?
Pay attention to the contact points! They arise every time a customer comes into contact with a company in any way, and have a decisive influence on whether he wants to do business with you. The more your company has an online presence, the more points of contact there are online.
Igor Mann, Russian marketing guru, and his colleague Nadezhda Pominova will tell you all about how to get the most out of them and turn your visitors into buyers, and buyers into loyal clients.
You will be surprised what efficiency resource was hidden in a site that you have long known!

Why should you buy this book?

“Smart” touch points will improve Customers’ impression of your company, and therefore increase sales.
In the book you will not find a drop of water - only specific points of contact, only chips, only tools, only inspiring examples.
The authors have collected many examples from the experience of leading companies in Internet marketing and recognized experts in this field.

Reader reviews

Entrepreneurs who have recently gone online or are just planning to create their own website. You, ladies and gentlemen, need this book like no one else. As a general guide to Internet marketing, a guide to creating a website and a checklist at different stages of promotion.

Polina Beletskaya, Marketer, copywriter and translator. , http://web-likbez.com/

One of the most rewarding things in marketing is communicating with your Clients, future, present and past. After all, it is for the Client that we all work. How can the Client contact the company? Exclusively through points of contact. When you control and develop your online touch points, you control Customers' opinions about your company. After all, some review on a musty forum or a ridiculous picture of an employee on social media. networks can put an end to winning the next Client. Online contact points are a kind of checklist on how to put the company’s image on the Internet in order and how to manage it. In this work, Igor and Nadezhda provided the best leadership.

Vitaly Myshlyaev, Internet marketer, co-founder of the Internet marketing agency “LeadMachine”, author of the iMarketing system together with Igor Mann., http://myshlaev.ru/

The system is built on a series of letters, and represents good example...points of contact. The letters are beautifully formatted, arrive exactly on schedule and involve you in working with the book. Moreover, through these letters the book is presented in an exclusively practical format - I had time between letters to think about what I had written, discuss something and test it in practice.

Vadim Bugaev, founder of the “Books for Business” and “Reading for Practical Use” projects, http://www.read4practice.ru/

Strength“Points of contact” in the structure: all tools are packaged in sections. At the end you get a checklist from which all you have to do is make a plan and implement what doesn’t exist yet.

Maria Leontieva, business consultant, author of the blog “The best solutions for business and career development”, head of the educational project “Business Art”., http://mariyaleontieva.com/

The book will definitely not become an academic textbook. According to it, wise teachers will not tell the theory to university students. Because there is no theory in the book.
Each chapter is written as practical as possible (take it and do it), and at the end of each chapter the authors “finish off” with chips and tools that will help polish the contact point discussed in the chapter.