There is evidence that at least 7 touch points are required before strangers become customers. Most people talk about all sorts of different kinds of touch points but most people assume you already have a solid brand and great visuals. For those starting out or seeking a refresh, this may not be true. Wherever you are in your entrepreneurial process, in order to convert more strangers to customers, you need a solid visual brand. You have to make visual decisions early on and stick to them for a while. If you are consistent, each time a stranger sees your brand, it counts towards one of those touch points needed for conversion. If not, your efforts can be stalled or halted completely and your sales suffer.
Touch points are visual first and super fast
We SEE everything first. If we hear about something from a friend, the first thing we do is look it up. If we see a relevant ad, we look into it further. If we need something, we LOOK for it. Even when we aren’t actively looking for something, we are scrolling, looking at what’s out there. What people see is important and your company visuals can accelerate your path to trust and sales (if it looks familiar over time and inspires trust) or stop it dead in its tracks (if it is inconsistent or confusing).
You want strangers to log each touch point they have with your brand under the same heading (your company) in their brain each time. There is a super small window to be logged (mere seconds as they scroll past) and sometimes logging even happens subconsciously. You need to get it exactly right EACH TIME and grab their attention EACH TIME for it to be logged as a touch point towards trust and conversion.
Inconsistency can stall or halt your sales process
Let’s say on Monday you post a post on Facebook announcing a sale with the photo of the product. Then the next day you find a totally awesome photo you like of a cool location so you post it on Instagram. Then 3 days later, you post on LinkedIn using a different product photo visual and some of the Facebook text. After a week, you wonder why you haven’t gotten tons of sales.
Each time someone saw something from you, they couldn’t connect the dots because you were inconsistent. It may have even turned them off because they were confused. The best approach is to design a single ad using your main brand colours (use the numerical values for absolute consistency) and fonts and then adjust it for each social platform. You can make small changes to your text for audience testing but the fonts and colours should stay the same.
Instead of confusing your customers, be consistent with the same colours, fonts and shapes of your brand and start logging multiple touch points.
Start with a branding guide
The easiest way to make sure all of your visuals are consistent is a branding guide. I have one here. Write all of your choices down and then you’ll be prepared for any kind of situation, a social media post, a trade show banner or a t-shirt. And each time a stranger sees you, it will count as a touch point towards converting strangers to customers.
