Everything You Need To Know About Lifecycle Marketing

Savvy marketers know it's rare to reel in customers at the first encounter with a brand. Winning people overtakes time, thoughtful touchpoints, and a whole lot of trust. Fortunately, there's a strategy that includes all of these and more. It's called lifecycle marketing, and it's how companies attract and retain customers beyond that impulse purchase.?

All businesses create their unique lifecycle marketing strategy, but the purpose is the same: to engage customers, increase revenue, and grow a brand. Different from the buyer's journey or conversion funnel, lifecycle marketing considers a customer long after they make a purchase. The focus is to bring in buyers and turn them into loyal brand advocates.

What is Lifecycle Marketing?

Lifecycle marketing is the mix of strategies a company uses to positively influence customer behaviour as they move through each touchpoint of the marketing cycle, from the initial attraction to becoming a brand advocate. A lifecycle can be short or long. Companies like Nespresso or Whole Foods Market have shorter cycles and need to attract people back almost immediately after they purchase. But companies with lifecycles like Mercedes or Avocado Mattress play the long game of customer retention and advocacy to bring in more business.?

The ultimate goal is to always get customers and keep them coming back. No matter the cycle length, various stages make up any lifecycle marketing plan. Understanding these will help you target your audience's specific needs at each stage, whether they're coming in as a lead, first-time buyer, repeat customer, or lapsed customer.?

How to Create Lifecycle Marketing Strategy?

Strategy is the core of successful lifecycle marketing. Without it, you will likely bring in the wrong leads and will waste your budget on people who won't turn into brand advocates. With it, you can:?

• Grow your customer base by offering a better buying experience.?
• Improve sales by turning one-time buyers into repeat customers.?
• Turn buyers into brand advocates who rave about your company.?
• Improve your marketing ROI and lifetime customer value.

The best strategies account for how people interact with your brand at specific stages within the lifecycle. Here's an example of how to use different marketing channels throughout the entire cycle. Your company may do well with a simple strategy, or you may need to include more touchpoints and channels within each stage.?

For instance, a small art gallery may use social media, email, a website, and events to bring in artists and potential buyers. But a major art museum like The Metropolitan Museum of Art will need a more complex marketing strategy to reach its thousands of visitors, attract donors, sell and retain memberships, draw in artists and exhibits, sell retail products, and host events.

Instead of blindly marketing to the masses, you must be strategic and tie your sales directly to your promotion efforts. Let's walk through the strategies you can use at each stage.

Awareness

You want to attract as many people within your target audience as possible, so it's time to create highly shareable, highly visible content. Awareness strategies include:

• Create targeted audiences for each buyer persona, so you know the people you bring in fit your buyer profile.
• Research and use keywords that can help people discover your brand when searching online.
• Write blog posts that answer key questions your audience may have about common problems.
• Share your offerings in an eye-catching paid or organic social ad.
• Put up a billboard or banner ad in the places your audience visits.
• Create a catchy ad on the podcasts you know potential buyers listen to.
• Collaborate with guests or influencers your audience follows to cross-promote content.

It's important to bring people in, but remember not to focus all of your efforts on acquiring leads. Although 67% of companies use lead generation as the sole metric to determine content success, returning customers spend 67% more than new buyers on average.

Engagement

Your strategy for the engagement stage is to share information about your offerings so people can see why your brand is the best. Bring people to your website or channels, and keep them there.

These prospects are still relatively high in the sales funnel, so you have to answer their questions with succinct content that's easy to understand. Some engagement strategies include:

• Design engaging landing pages that are simple to navigate.
• Video demos to showcase the features of your product or service.
• Blog posts, guides, or templates that provide solutions to common customer problems.
• Whitepapers covering insightful research or industry trends.
• Case studies that highlight the positives of doing business with your brand.
• Email campaigns to address sticking points before they happen.

Engaging with customers is increasingly about personalization and instant gratification. 83% of customers who contact a company expect immediate engangement.

That means you need to have your channels dialled in and ready to respond, likely with help from automation technology. If you do, prospects will funnel into the next lifestyle stage.

Conversion

You've impressed a potential buyer, and the time has come to transition them from a prospect into a customer. To do that, make it as simple as possible for them to convert (aka, buy). Think about what people would need to see when comparing your brand to a competitor. Here are strategies for making sure they're confident in their decision.

• Offer clear pricing and feature information on your site, so they can compare options.
• Share customer testimonials to build trust in the post-purchase experience.
• Create a demo or free trial to increase confidence in the full investment.
• Send an email that answers questions senior leaders may have to make pitching easier.
• Give a peek at your customer service experience for post-purchase support.

Just like the engagement stage, personalization is the key to conversion. Research shows that online retailers improve conversion rates by about 8% when personalizing the customer experience. So try to make a potential customer feel unique, instead of being another number that gets you closer to your revenue goals.

Retention

Unfortunately, not enough marketing dollars are spent on retaining customers. Lead generation may seem sexier, but 93% of customers are likely to make repeat purchases with companies that offer excellent customer service. If you can create a good experience and offer exceptional service right after people make a purchase, you can engage buyers and increase profits.

• Set up easy-to-use support options like live chat, messaging, FAQ pages, or troubleshooting forums. For simple service issues, 65% of customers prefer to help themselves.
• Onboarding materials that make set up and use simple and stress-free.
• Offer a discount code or perk for a future purchase.
• Announce a new product or offering with an engaging campaign — you can even offer exclusive first access to existing customers.
• Targeted ads with additional offerings that complement a first purchase (i.e., a sleeping bag and mat for someone who buys a tent).
• Emails to inform customers of updates or ways to improve their current purchase.

Don't leave your customers to fend for themselves in this stage. Honing your retention marketing strategies means boosting your revenue and improving your overall customer experience.

Loyalty

The final stage in lifecycle marketing is all about loyalty. When customers become advocates, they can't stop talking about your brand to anyone who will listen. They recognize your logo and will choose it over others without a second thought. They drive leads and sales and are repeat buyers. Strategies to cultivate this type of loyalty include:

• Exclusive in-app features or loyalty club membership.
• Incentives for sharing testimonials (i.e., discount codes or free products).
• Events or webinars with team members or industry experts.
• Referral programs for people who bring in new customers.
• Social media features to raise brand awareness for both companies.
• Reactivation campaigns for lapsed customers.

Customers who trust a brand are 95% more likely to remain loyal to it, so your job is to maintain peoples' expectations and show them why their feedback is valued. A strong strategy here encourages customers to repeat the cycle and bring new prospects into the awareness stage.

Conclusion

Customer lifecycle approaches vary in different industries. Every brand is special, featuring its unique approaches that work with the target users exclusively. Whichever strategies you select, the thing that we can state with 100% confidence is that you need to communicate with your audience and provide when with the proper assistance. Create a better journey for your customers and they will pay you back with a revenue boost.