Marketing Touchpoints Evolving Under Social Media Influx

Above map from here:

In marketing of old there was a concept named “Touchpoint” which like many subjects, once academics get hot for it takes on many meanings, all argued and debated about without adding any clarity or substance. In its simplest form, a Touchpoint is any interaction between a company and “customers,” where customers may be past, current, or potential future buyers. Also in the past, these interactions were very much managed by marketing. In its simplest form in the past, marketers were involved in “Push” marketing, where the attributes of a company’s product and/or services where positioned in media commonly frequented by customers (as defined above) to entice them to engage in or continue a brand experience. For instance, guys are the heavy half of beer drinkers, and guys watch lots of football and NASCAR, so beer makers support such sports (if indeed NASCAR is a sport) through product placement and ads throughout. Budweiser for instance, is a perennial winner of Super Bowl ads. Touchpoint management was an integral and extremely important function of marketing. Note “WAS.”

Enter Social Media such as blogs, forums, Facebook and Twitter. Try as they might, marketers found they have lost the handle of who sees what when and how about a company’s brand. Yes, companies have “specialists’ in these areas, attempting to “control” what is said by whom about their brands, but the social movement is very much uninhibited and rails against any form of “guidance,” regardless of the source. Thus, companies have evolved from marketing being in charge of touchpoints, to everyone in the company being responsible.

But herein lies another larger problem: Who in the company is accountable for touchpoint management? In the military, responsibility is never assigned without associated accountability. Think of it in terms of who gets paid for great customer management? See the conundrum? Hank