Find new customers efficiently with the Touch-Tell-Sell model

Consumers today use all kinds of devices and channels together. The purchase of, for example, a laptop online involves different contact moments. Entrepreneurs and marketers often do not have a good view of this customer journey, so they miss out on many opportunities. With the Touch-Tell-Sell model of DQ&A convert your customer insights into efficient marketing. So that you can efficiently find new customers and retain existing customers. Core of the story? Really want to understand your customer.

Touch, tell, sell (and care!)

With the Touch-Tell-Sell you divide the customer journey into four parts that form the customer experience: touch, tell, sell and care.

• Touch: this is about reaching your target group and addressing potential new customers. With channels such as social, SEO, Display and YouTube you make that first contact. KPIs are % new visitors and brand recognition.
• Tell: in this phase you inform the customer and prove yourself as a potential seller. With channels such as SEO, Display, YouTube, SEA (including remarketing) you bet on valuable content. CTAs are assisted conversions and micro-conversions such as time on the page, page depth and number of sessions.
• Sell: with reasons to buy you convince your customers to buy. You do this by removing thresholds (money-back guarantee!) And giving sales incentives (now temporarily reduced in price!). Channels are affiliate marketing, remarketing, again SEO and e-mail. KPIs are conversion, CPS (cost-per-sale) and ROI.
• Care: unless you do not need a customer relationship in your industry, you will have to provide some aftercare. With good customer service (via social and self help) and tips for optimal use of your product or service you ensure binding after the purchase. KPIs are customer loyalty and retention rate.

The customer is king

The customer journey is paramount in this model. How does the customer experience your service? Which steps do your customers have to go through to place an order? Is that user friendly? You consider how a purchase is made. Each phase of the Touch-Tell-Sell model is associated with a different phase. The most important thing is to think per phase and channel which questions the customer has and how he likes to be helped further. Content plays a major role in this.

With a good story you show that you really understand the customer. So: how he becomes aware of a problem, which solutions he sees as relevant and wants to compare, what he considers important when purchasing and how he would like to deal with your company. Where some companies think it's about a transaction, it's really about building a customer relationship. And that starts with the basics: the customer has a need that you want to fulfill. Time after time.

Improve the customer experience

Whoever will use the Touch-Tell-Sell model, starts by formulating a problem statement. What do you actually want to achieve and how do you deal with customers? You take a close look at the customer experience through the customer journey. Where are the bottlenecks and where are the opportunities?

A good starting point is to walk through the entire process as a potential customer, starting with a search in Google. Then see how you as a customer are introduced with your own company. Do you get real answers to your questions? Are you being triggered to make a purchase? How do you experience this aftercare? This way you will quickly find logical points for improvement. After an initial iteration, you can then ask five customers to test the process for you. With this you will find extra points for attention to pick up.

The role of data

You can measure every marketing channel that you use: SEO via the Google Search Console. SEA, Display, YouTube and social via the Google Tag Manager and the advertising platforms themselves. The challenge is to bring this data together in a Touch-Tell-Sell model where you discover the different phases per customer. On the one hand, this can be done by measuring the behavior on your website: someone who has visited the product pages several times is in the Tell phase and needs a push to the Sell phase. And that is possible via remarketing, or a personalized content system.

Ultimately, you want to get a 360 degree view per customer. So that you can approach the customer optimally at the individual level with the right message, via the right channel at the right time. For that you have to link all available customer data together to put together relevant customer profiles. The privacy legislation - rightly - sets a limit to the protection of consumers. The only real reason why consumers want to make their data available to companies is when it really benefits them. Discount, exclusivity or extra service. That differs per target group and market, of course, but it is precisely that with which you can really show the customer that you understand and want to understand them.