Last time, I wrote about how marketers should choose the right social experience—one that accentuates unique strengths—to put at the center of integrated communications. We’re now at a spot where we can structure and assign roles to our other touchpoints so we can scale that social experience.
To get started, break touchpoints into two categories: secondary touchpoints (the outer circle in the graphic below) and supporting touchpoints (the middle circle):
Click Image to Enlarge | Secondary and supporting touchpoints establish a mental link and then drive the target audience to the social experience focal point.
1. Secondary Touchpoints link the social experience to your brand for the target audience. They’re often mass in nature—TV, out-of-home, print, and so on. Best Buy’s TV ads showcasing Twelpforce are one example of such a secondary touchpoint.
2. Supporting Touchpoints drive the target audience to the desired social experience. Targeted banner ads, paid search, and direct marketing often do well here. Best deployed, these touchpoints will:
- Engage a target audience at moments when they are susceptible to or desirous of the social experience
- Enable easy entry to the experience.
Once you’ve assigned roles to touchpoints, you can choose the metrics best suited for those roles. You’ll find that the focus of the metrics can be much more specific now, because each touchpoint has a specific role to play. See the chart above for guidance on primary and secondary metrics for each touchpoint category.
In addition to tracking more specific metrics, be sure to think through how long you actually need mass media to establish that link between the brand and the social experience. At some point, it will make sense to dial down these secondary, mass touchpoints and shift some part of those (expensive) resources to (often more affordable) supporting touchpoints.
Note how different this approach is compared to traditional B2C media planning. Instead of planning around TV and bolting on social media as an afterthought (unlikely to be well integrated), social experience is now at the center.
Consequently, one side benefit is that social media dollars won’t be the first on the chopping block when budgets get tight. Protecting that funding is critical for supporting the longer-term asset that many social media investments represent.
MLC Members: Download the full case study, illustrating examples of touchpoint role assignment and measurement. Happy planning! In the social revolution, you’ve nothing to lose but your mass media chains.
Related posts:
- Nothing to Lose But Your Chains: Touchpoint Planning in the Social (Media) Revolution
- With Social Experience, Be Different…in a Way That Few Can Follow
- Customer Experience Myth: Touchpoints Matter
- The Social Media Mistake You Don’t Know You’re Making
- Social Media: Moving from Compulsion to Innovation
Commenting Guidelines
We hope conversations will be energetic, constructive, and provocative. All posts will be reviewed by our editors and may be edited for clarity, length, and relevance.
We ask that you adhere to the following guidelines.
1. No selling of products or services.
2. No ad hominem attacks. These are conversations in which we debate ideas. Criticize ideas, not the people behind them.