Hello and welcome to the debut of Touchpoints. On this blog, our goal is to offer a little perspective on marketing and advertising in Las Vegas, but also trends across the country that offer arduous lessons or moments of brilliance that can perhaps be applied to your own strategies.
A little background—I have a marketing consultancy in Las Vegas called “Touchpoint”. The full name is Touchpoint Research Marketing and Advertising, but that’s way too long to enunciate regularly, so we just say “Touchpoint”. Our approach at Touchpoint has a simple and singular focus—we put our marketing and advertising efforts through the filter of your customer’s viewpoint. We use that lens to shine a spotlight on every facet of your marketing. History, and a little experience, has shown that if you do a little research, you find out what a customer will like or respond to, and guess what? You get better results. You waste less money. Yes, there’s an initial investment to consider, but in the long run you save because you’ve approached your customer with the right message and the right product thus avoiding the negative consequences that emerge from skipping your homework. In short, we establish strategies for businesses to closely define their marketing and advertising plans with the customer in mind, using the power of research. To learn more visit www.touchpointrma.com.
I’ve worked in advertising my whole career. I’ve had some time with ad agencies, some on my own, but much of the time with media companies. And over the last couple of decades, I’ve witnessed the dynamic shift from so-called “Traditional” media—television, newspaper, print, etc., to so-called “New” media—online banner ads, search marketing, content marketing, video optimization, and mobile, etc. Thus, the perspective I wish to offer is how to make sense of both “Traditional” and “New” methods of marketing as we experience mercurial technological change.
And of course, we’ll discuss the effect of these new technologies on your customer. After all, your customers’ media consumption has also rapidly changed, and if you’re not adjusting to those changes, your customers’ perception of your business can change literally overnight. Just ask Borders Books if they think technology had an effect on their business, as their cautionary stance ultimately pulled them into bankruptcy.
Before I conclude this introductory post, I want to give you a sample of a take-away I hope you’ll get from each entry.
As we discuss the benefits and pitfalls of various forms of advertising, I want to stress the importance of your online presence. Some companies truly “get” this, but I still find so many that don’t. You’re online presence, or to use a more global term—digital presence—is critical to your survival as a business. It’s no longer an add-on, or just something you need because everyone else has one. It is foundational. If you don’t capitalize on this part of your business, one or more competitors will. And it’s likely to be a small competitor flying under the radar. We’ll touch on this topic often, but here are a few suggestions to expand your digital presence. It’s one of the most important customer “touchpoints” of your marketing.
Your Business Digital Presence:
  • If you don’t have a digital presence that shows the best representation of your business, with plenty of interactivity opportunities, develop a new website or web page that does.
  • If prospects and current customers do not easily find your site, develop a strategic digital marketing plan to drive qualified traffic to your web pages.
  • Create sales funnels and distinct calls to action in your web presence to get customers to engage with you.
  • Review the online competitive landscape (regularly) to develop an effective plan.
  • Expand your digital presence to dominate your competition with websites, blogs, social media sites, places pages, reviews, etc.
  • Build analytics into all online presence to constantly learn more about your prospects and customers, and to evaluate your R.O.I.
  • Find a professional with a proven track record to help you develop and execute the strategy.
THE TOUCHPOINT: If you’re a business owner and want to stay that way, you need to develop a digital marketing plan. No business will survive in the future without it. In actuality, it’s more foundational that any other form of marketing since your customer is likely to spend the most time with you there—maybe even more than face to face.