“How did you hear about us?”. “I drove past”.

“How did you hear about us?” “Oh, I just drove past and saw the sign out the front”.

This would have to be one of our all-time favourite responses from customers in response to the ever-important lead generation question. How do our customers hear about our brands.

Great for sales representatives who are often happy to advocate for minimal marketing; not-so-great for marketers who know that the way people consume information comes from a variety of sources over a number of times before they take action.

Now, let’s assume the customer has walked past a new shop in a row of shops in a shopping centre, or high-street. Highly credible. This does indeed happen and can often be the first interaction between a customer and a brand.

Most often than not, it is a different story. Recently we had the opposite experience, when leaving an appointment, we saw that we were directly opposite a shop we had been wanting to visit and had been following on social media for some time. In this case, we mentioned to the owner that we had been wanting to visit the shop however we couldn’t find the shop where we thought it was located. This was a case of “we just walked past”, but it was more like we had been engaged with the shop through their marketing efforts on social media.

So, what happens to us as consumers when we’re engaging with marketing efforts both in the online world and IRL before we take action?

In ye olde days, we as consumers needed to see something seven times, yes seven times, before we took action (it is now believed that we can times this by seven again – daily, thanks to social media).

Now, that taking action could have been to simply find out more about the product / services, or purchase. We could have been exposed to marketing efforts in a variety of ways (any marketing activity worth their salt always employs more than one channel to market).

We distinctly working a campaign (pre-social media days) promoting a retirement village where the integrated marketing campaign employed the following in the local community: newspaper advertising, radio advertising, shopping centre advertising, billboard, direct mail (letterbox drop), open days, and signage. There were many and varied channels used to the target audience. However, time-after-time, the sales team reported that customers were saying that they “drove past” and this is what prompted them to find out more about the village.

Let’s not mention that the infamous was likely number seven of the seventh times they had been engaged with the marketing efforts. They had likely seen a newspaper advert or heard the radio advert in their car umpteen times, had even likely seen some of the shopping centre marketing efforts.

Yet, in this case, as is in the case where we stopped in at a shop we had been looking to locate, it was only the last interaction with the marketing efforts (in both cases, signage and a shop front) that made us take action. And it is this final action that we report when we respond to “how did you hear about us?”.

So, given this, should we look at our marketing actions and dismiss them all for signage, or in the online world, a website, thinking this will save us time and money? Absolutely not. There are three things to take into consideration.

1)    The customer journey: in basic terms, this is the path that we send customers (potential and returning) along as we ‘encourage’ them to further engage with your brand, find out more about the products / services on offer and ultimately, build trust with the brand before they take action. The customer journey is activated through a number of different touchpoints, or the integrated marketing and communications activities.

2)    Integrated marketing and communications campaigns: also called multi-channel campaigns, this really means employing a number of different marketing / communications mediums / channels into your programs. This is generally a mixture of online (social media; digital display, ie website advertising; e-newsletters; or email campaigns) and offline (events, outdoor – such as billboards, newspaper or radio advertising, PR opportunities and so on). Campaigns built on this principle ensure you are able to reach more people than using one medium (ie social media) and can create a more rounded story around your brand through the different messages told through the different channels. This all adds to the ‘seven x seven’ theory, and importantly builds greater trust in your brand.

3)    Building brand trust: It is through all of the interactions with a brand that people build up a connection with a brand. They build up a picture of their experience with the brand. It is how brands form relationships with customers, directly and indirectly. It is only when a customer feels they have built enough trust will they likely take action, or when their subconscious connects the dots, and they see a touchpoint that leads to a positive action.

Ultimately, as much as some would love to put all marketing efforts down to one touchpoints, as is often in life, it is the culmination of many little touchpoints that lead to the greater action.