It’s easier and, possibly, more cost-efficient to take care of current customers than to find and build relationships with new ones. Applying lifecycle marketing is one way of helping you with customer retention. This type of marketing strategy involves designing and implementing strategies that would help keep customers engaged throughout their entire buying experience.
What is Lifecycle Marketing?
Lifecycle marketing is an approach that highly focuses on aiding customers and addressing their problems or needs at every stage of their consumer journey. It requires great knowledge about your customers, what they are looking for, what concerns they usually have, and what keeps them interested.
It entails crafting marketing activities and content across different channels that provide support to prospects and returning customers as they go along their path-to-purchase.
Why is Lifecycle Marketing Important?
- It empowers you to improve customer experiences.
This marketing strategy prompts you to map out evaluate customer paths. While there are pre-built ones available to the public, creating a customized journey map can help you enhance your business’s customer lifetime value chart.
- It strengthens a brand’s connection with its customers.
This approach compels you to understand your customer base better and see opportunities through which you can further address their needs. This helps your business build stronger relationships with them and empowers you to strengthen your brand’s image.
- It can help transform customers into brand advocates.
When done well, lifecycle marketing is a self-sustaining way of getting more customers while keeping current ones. Successfully satisfying and continuously engaging current customers would encourage them to talk about or vouch for your brand.
What is the Lifecycle Marketing Process?
Many companies and businesses, including start-up businesses, have adopted this marketing strategy because it is highly sustainable. However, lifecycle marketing isn’t as simple as asking customers about what they want. There are steps you need to take to keep your customers interested and coming back for more.
- Targeting
First, you would to identify and understand your target customers. Set demographic, sociographic, and psychographic parameters for your business, and find out more about this consumer profile’s needs, interests, and behaviors.
- Engaging
You can get their attention via different types of communication materials, such as videos, infographics, or social content. You can encourage them to share information with you via web forms by offering special benefits, like discounts, free trials, or members-only content.
During this stage, some tasks such as email or publishing social media content can be automated.
- Converting
This step entails crafting a compelling brand story and providing helpful information that would influence buying decisions and make your product or service the top choice when the customer is finally ready to purchase.
You can create a buying process map and provide hard-to-resist offers to help move your customers towards buying your product or availing of your service.
- Acquiring
Once you close a sale, it’s important to have a clear summary of what your customers purchased and what they can expect from you.
- Fulfilling
Ensure proper delivery of purchased goods or services. During this stage, you can employ strategies that can impress your customer enough to come back again.
- Activating
You can offer incentives or discounts if they refer someone to your business. By doing so, you can create paths for additional leads without having to spend too much on customer acquisition.
Your happy customers will most likely become brand advocates who would recommend your product or service to other people with the same wants and needs.
- Evaluating
It is also important to keep track of each customer’s buying process. Identify the weak points in your buying process map. Is your offer a bit lacking? Did a product suggestion turn them off? Is there not enough incentive to buy you?
These questions will help you strengthen and improve your customer journey map. Designing an effective lifecycle marketing strategy entails a lot of time and effort. You may choose to do it on your own for your business or hire branding agencies that can help you from start to finish. These agencies help you set up automated emails for your customers, retarget advertisements and social media, and get your website ready for customer personalization.
