Why You Want To Touch Your Target Client 27 Times (More Or Less)

The situation:

You’ve managed to get a comprehensive marketing campaign strategized, your marketing materials assembled, and your efforts delivered to your intended audience. As you finalize your plan and approve it, visions of the mountains of leads and prospects your campaign will generate swirl through your head. Proud and confident, you launch your marketing initiative and wait for the incoming deluge of interest.

A week later, you’re still waiting for your first new contact.

But Why?

Never fear, this apparent “failure” (as it may now seem) of your marketing is not yet a reliable indicator of your campaign’s true level of success. Some time between your initiative’s launch and seeing its results is to be expected, as it will take time to accumulate the “touches” necessary to make an impression.

The 27 Touch Rule

After all, there are very few examples of marketing initiatives in history that managed to garner immediate results. As a generally accepted rule, it can take up to 27 individual touches to convert someone completely into a customer or client. While this isn’t necessarily the best news for those seeking immediate results, it is a reality of advertising to the audiences of contemporary society.

Each touch is meant to be a building block, gradually constructing a solid, reasoned argument to convince the soon-to-be customer to finally take action and make a purchase. When was the last time that you made a major purchase or commitment without carefully mulling over and researching your options? By utilizing some best practices of touch marketing, you may contribute some positive reinforcement into the decision process of your prospect.

So, What's Considered a Touch?

Putting it briefly, a lot of things can serve as a touchpoint for your intended audience. Any interaction that leaves an impression of your company and services on your target qualifies, regardless of their position in your sales process. Whether your goal with a given party is to convert them into a prospect, close a sale of a good or service, or inspire a customer to return, touches are methods of encouraging the process along.

A Sample Scenario:

Let’s walk through a series of events to demonstrate how a touch may be delivered. Of course, this is just one version among many possible scenarios. Nevertheless, it is always a good strategy to make these marketing touches by maintaining well-made deliverables and quality content.

One of your target prospects from your area is said to be seeking out an MSP to aid them with their current technology woes. Fortunately, you are active with your local Chamber of Commerce and are mentioned at meetings on a fairly regular basis. Touch one.

In addition to this, you and your company have remained active as sponsors of various local events and chapters of charities, a few of which are regularly attended by the decision makers of your target. Touches two, three, and four.

As an addition to your marketing, you have begun to run print ads in the local paper, providing you with touch five.

Throughout this time, you have also been placing advertisements on numerous channels - appearing in trade and Chamber of Commerce publications, on web pages relevant to MSP viewers, and elsewhere. These efforts ultimately provide you with your sixth through ninth touches, and so on and so forth as time passes.

As your marketing efforts continue, you gradually accumulate enough touches that the 27 impressions upon your prospect are made - and if they were effective, that prospect should be interested in beginning to do business, and your follow up touches will have a different purpose.

For more advice as to how to make these 27 touches to best impress your prospects, reach out to us at JoomConnect at http://jmct.io/letstalk.