Marketing is a business aspect that would be foolish to ignore. It is not a one-time thing, and constant evaluation and effort are needed to retain your customers. It is also important for one to provide flawless customer experience, that would ultimately make them your fans.
Do you believe that marketing is a one-time process? Experienced marketers know that winning people’s trust, let alone their money, takes time. That is where lifecycle marketing comes in. It covers the methods marketers use to keep their product relevant to customers over the long run, including staying in conversation with customers after they have made a purchase. Keep reading to learn what lifecycle marketing is, its stages, practical examples for each stage, and how to build a strategy.
What is customer lifecycle marketing?
Consider this: You have made a purchase from a brand. Their marketing strategy and customer support has been so flawless that you start recommending the brand to your friends as well.
This is the result of customer lifecycle marketing: an approach marketers use to keep customers engaged and loyal for a longer period of time. In simpler words, customers stay with you as long as your product or service keeps meeting their needs.
This marketing strategy is used so that your customers become your brand ambassadors. It is a cost-effective and most credible method of marketing, as potential buyers would trust the testimony of those who have already tried and tested your product.
Why is customer lifecycle marketing important?
We hope that you would have understood by now what is a lifecycle strategy. Now, you might wonder, is it really crucial? Your concern is justified, as there are multiple marketing strategies that serve the common goal, that is, to increase the sales and growth of a company. Therefore, we have discussed below some of the main reasons why customer lifecycle marketing is important.
Builds customer lifetime value: By maintaining positive customer relations, you inspire them to stay loyal. Thus, their expense and lifetime value increases.
Boosts profit: It helps you maintain your existing customer base, and that is cost-effective as well.
Gives you a competitive advantage: By following a marketing lifecycle, your brand can shine out of its rivals.
What are the stages of lifecycle marketing?
The six stages of lifecycle marketing are discussed below.
Awareness: The foremost step in any marketing strategy is to make your consumers aware that you exist in the market. Not only this, one needs to highlight their USP at this stage.
Interest: While one can see that you exist, it doesn’t necessarily imply that they would be interested in your brand. Thus, developing strategies that would contribute to the audience’s interest is important.
Consideration: At this stage, customers are still considering whether they should make a purchase or not. Nonetheless, they will only choose to buy from you once you highlight your uniqueness.
Purchase: One finally decides to buy your product or service at this stage. However, reaching this stage entirely depends on the brand’s efforts in the previous three stages.
Retention: It would not contribute significantly to the brand’s growth if someone buys the product only once. Instead, you need to make sure your customers keep coming back to you and choose your brand over others. Lifecycle marketing, in both B2C and B2B, is about long-term relationships with customers.
Advocacy: Advocacy, in simple terms, means word of mouth advertising. This means that your satisfied consumers also start to tell others about your competitive advantages.
Lifecycle marketing examples for each stage
Here are common tactics businesses use at each stage. Treat them as starting points and adapt them to your audience and channels.
- Awareness: helpful blog posts, short social videos or search ads that answer the questions your future customers are already asking.
- Interest: a free guide, checklist or webinar offered in exchange for an email address, followed by a short welcome email series.
- Consideration: comparison pages, customer reviews, case studies and free trials or demos that show why your product fits.
- Purchase: a simple checkout, clear pricing, and a reminder email for visitors who leave items in their cart.
- Retention: onboarding emails or in-app tips after the first purchase, replenishment or renewal reminders, and loyalty rewards.
- Advocacy: asking happy customers for a review, running a referral program, and sharing customer stories with permission.
How to build a lifecycle marketing strategy?
Customer lifecycle marketing software, such as email marketing, CRM or marketing automation tools, can help you run these campaigns. Whatever tools you use, the following steps will help you build the strategy.
Understand your target audience’s behavior: By identifying the attitude of your target audience, one can develop strategies that purely resonate with their needs and wants.
Define your goals: Having clarity in your goals is always useful, as it gets easier to align your performance with them.
Customer segmentation: Dividing your customers at various levels will help you develop a more personalized marketing strategy.
Overcome the challenges: Undoubtedly, lifecycle marketing jobs are difficult. However, if you identify the points that hinder your customer interaction and growth, you can easily develop plans to get rid of them.
Map messages to each stage: Decide what a customer needs to hear at each stage, which channel suits it best (email, social media, in-app messages or ads), and what should trigger it, such as a sign-up, a first purchase or a period of inactivity.
Measure and improve: Track metrics such as conversion rate, repeat purchase rate, churn and customer lifetime value for each stage, then test and refine the messages that are not performing.
Conclusion
To sum it up, there are various aspects of lifecycle marketing that one can use to attract customers. Not only this, but it can also help you have a loyal fanbase and make them your brand advocates. Afterall, who would not prefer advertising, that too, for free, for their products?
