Christo: How many touches does it take to make a sale? This is a common question that comes up.

A common belief in the marketing world is that it takes 7 touches, not touchy feeling type touches, but how many touch points is from your marketing does it take to build familiarity, build trust, I guess, to get to a point of making a sale. People say it takes 7 touches, which sounds brilliant, but garbage really if we really think about this.

What you need to think about is it‘s not just always going to be 7 touches, of course, for different customers. There will be some people that will be red hot, ready to buy, they‘re qualified, they‘ve done their research and they‘re ready to act as long as your offer is good, you know, and it‘s clear in terms of what your marketing message is and it answers what they want. They‘re going to buy.

So, and then on the other hand, there‘s going to be people who are going to take a long time to buy from you no matter what you sell, whether you are a product or a service business. Whether you‘re a B to B or a B to C, or business to business, or business to corporate, even or business to consumer, it doesn‘t matter. What we need to think about is catering for these different segments. If you have a red-hot buyer who‘s ready to buy from you, make it crystal clear, exactly how to make a purchase, or exactly how to move towards getting a quote from you, or booking a meeting with you so it‘s super easy and they don‘t even have to think. Move them towards a sale effortlessly, basically.

On the other hand, if people come across your marketing material and they‘re not ready to buy and they‘re going to take a long time to make a decision, that might not be 7 touches. It might end up being 50 touches, they might see your brand over and over and over. It‘s just not the right time for them right now but in 6 months they‘re ready to go or it could even be 18 months. So you have to have for these guys and this audience relationship-based marketing in place. So how you‘re collecting they‘re information, how you‘re building relationship with them and you‘re going to have consistent touch points forever, for as long as it takes to move to a sale. So it could be through an article through your website, tips that you share on social media, emails tips that you send out through your database, or little email highlights that direct people to content on your website. But you have to cater for both.

So I wanted to go through this. Look at your marketing and all of your activities and think about, is it crystal clear for a red-hot buyer to know what to buy and to move to a sale effortlessly? And have we got things in place to maintain relationships for as long as it takes.

So there‘s your little tip for today. Feel free to share this with anyone who you know would benefit. If you have questions about this or want to dive further into this topic, just feel free to post any questions on any of our social media platforms. We‘ll look after you there. Or contact admin@basicbananas.com or check out any of our workshops or books and products. Our podcast has a lot of really cool episodes where we go into specific strategies and how to maintain relationships as well. So check that out. It‘s called the Pick of the Bunch, and you‘ll find it on the podcast app on iPhone or on the Stitcher app if you‘re on Samsung or Android.

So keep creating ripple effects of awesomeness. We‘ll see you on the next episode.