Email from Clate Mask, CEO of Inusionsoft, points out “it takes seven touches before a lead is ready to buy”. 

What is a touch?  Any type of contact including an email, instant message, phone call, mailing, directed tweet, directed Facebook message, or inLink mail.

How to touch without offending?  Clate suggests “putting yourself in your prospects’ shoes to determine what’s important to them. Then create content that educates and builds trust. Using this content, you can create campaigns that move prospects progressively towards the sale.”

Ask yourself why you got that first touch?  If you are a language learning site like ISpeakHindi.com then that first touch could be for a variety of reasons.  If the person is going to India in a few weeksand wants to learn just a few basic phrases, then it is a matter of giving them those phrases and information to help immediately to help with the trip.  The interaction with these people will be different than the husband that has married a Hindi speaker and has no immediate needs but a long term interest.  With the first, it must be an intense, focused interaction.  With the later, it will be a more diffused, long term interaction.

If you are a home inspector like Texas Certified Home Inspection then you could be a home owner wanting to get the home inspected in preparation of selling.  Or perhaps you are a home buyer wanting to get a home inspector.  These people want immediate information, and will probably want to be left alone after completing the sell.  However, some of the people looking for a home inspector might be real estate agents and will want to develop a longer term relationship.  Or perhaps a home owner interested in tips on maintaining a home.  These lend themselves to a longer more involved relationship.

But lets say you are an online woman’s magazine like Woman’s In Site.    A sale looks very different than for the home inspector.  A sale would be a repeat visit, more page views, signing up for the email list.  At least that would be the public sale.  The other side would be potential advertisers who see value in the audience and in the brand.

The key to getting that sale is to maintain contact through multiple “touches”.  The key to touches being welcomed verses avoided is to understand the context of the initial touch.  How to do that is the key.

What options do you have available?  First, where did the touch come from?  If it came from another website, that might provide clues.  What was the first part of your site that they accessed?  Where did they go next?  There are tools that will help you determine this.  Google is constantly doing this by tailoring their Ad Words based upon the content of the site and the information it gathers about the user.

Another option is to ask.  “How can I help you?”  “What are you looking for?”  “Why are you here?” can be answered through a survey.

Know why people are coming to your site.  Know which ones would welcome further contact and which ones would rather you left them alone.  And may you have the wisdom to know the difference.