Think about all the brands you interacted with today. Nearly everything you have done so far today involved a brand, was enabled by a brand or was accompanied by a brand. These interactions are just one of many touchpoints with a specific brand.
Touchpoints, or touches for short, work in a way similar to that of how blood flows through our bodies. Your heart pumps blood through your body, providing it with the oxygen and nutrients it needs, but the heart alone isn’t solely responsible for enabling a steady, healthy heartbeat. Every vein, artery and vessel has an impact on your heartbeat. No matter how small a constricted vein may be, it has an impact on the flow of blood.
The same true for brand touches. There are probably some big touchpoints that your organization tends to focus on, like advertising and other outward facing communications. But while the focus is being put on these areas that tend to be seen as more important, the small touches are ignored and are chipping away at the heartbeat of your brand.
Because of the abundance of times that brands touch our lives in a given day, and the fact that we now have access to brands wherever and whenever we want to, every touchpoint has become a crucial interaction.
The Micro-Pulse is an idea that I introduced a few weeks ago at OpenBeta. On Wednesday at the InnoTech conference in Oklahoma City, I was given the opportunity to give a talk that expanded on the idea even further. I focused more on touches in social media with this presentation, since I was speaking to at a technology conference, but I plan on applying this concept to both the online and offline brand worlds.
Do you have an example of a time when a small touchpoint mattered to you?
