Touchpoint mapping
Touchpoint mapping for a purchase, not a funnel
A touchpoint is a place where a buying group meets the product, the vendor, or each other, and where the purchase can change direction. Mapping those places tells you where to interview and where to observe. It does not draw a fantasy journey with equal stages and a conversion rate at the end.
Start from the deal, not from the campaign calendar
Marketing calendars list webinars, emails, and events the company controls. Buyers list security questionnaires, a colleague’s warning, a renewal notice, a failed sandbox, and a Friday meeting where someone has to defend the choice. Touchpoint mapping at trykux follows the buyer’s list. If a campaign touch never appears in customer interviews or in a live scene, it can stay on the campaign plan. It does not belong on the research map.
Name each touchpoint with four facts: who is present, what artifact is in play, what decision is possible there, and what usually goes wrong. “Website” is not a touchpoint under this rule. “The page a champion forwards to a security reviewer, and the sentence that reviewer cannot find” is a touchpoint. The second version can be checked. The first version can only be decorated.
How to build the map in a week
- Pick one lost deal, one won deal, and one deal still open. Three is enough to see repetition. It is not a sample of the market.
- From interviews, list every scene the buyer remembers, including scenes with no vendor in the room.
- Mark the scene where time disappeared. That is a candidate for market observation.
- Attach the role from decision-maker research. A touchpoint with no role is a rumor.
- Write the friction in plain words: proof, politics, switching cost, timing, or a missing owner. The longer essay is purchase friction.
- Keep a claude note for any sentence that shows up at that touchpoint more than once. Do not average the sentences into a theme yet.
A working table
Use a table like this as a research instrument. The cells are hypotheses until a conversation or a scene fills them. Empty cells stay empty.
| Touchpoint | Who is in the room | Evidence you can actually collect | Friction signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery call | Champion, sometimes a user | Who talks, who is promised for “later” | Economic buyer is a rumor |
| Security review | Reviewer, champion as translator | Repeated checklist questions, vendor nouns | Proof gap: no reusable sentence |
| Legal redline | Counsel, rarely the user | Clauses that return twice | Data use or liability unnamed |
| Procurement | Buyer, finance partner | Required fields, timing, incumbent terms | Price arrives before proof |
| Onboarding hour | Operator, implementation lead | The step where work stops | No named owner for setup |
| Quarterly review | Champion, sometimes the buyer | What is celebrated, what is off the agenda | Renewal risk with no language |
This table is a template of places. It is not a finding about any category, and it is not a claim that every deal visits every row.
What the map is allowed to conclude
A finished map says: in the deals we studied, time pooled in these scenes, with these roles, around these artifacts. It can recommend where the next ten hours of research should go. It cannot recommend a budget multiplier, a win-rate lift, or a “most important channel.” Channels are a different question, asked with different evidence.
When a row is thick with repeated language, move those lines into claude notes and test them as a pattern. When a row is thin, the correct output is a plan to observe that scene, not a story that covers the gap.
The row that stalls is the next chapter
Mapping shows the room. Friction names why the room cannot finish. Read them as a pair.
Read purchase friction