Lifecycle Marketing: What Is It and Why Is It Important?

The primary goal of marketing used to be brand awareness. A brand or company wanted people to walk in and start a relationship with them. Due to consumers’ hyper-awareness and the ease of access to information online, marketing priorities have changed. Although brand awareness is still important, it is not the end goal – not even making a sale.

A company’s long-term return on investment (ROI) from marketing depends on its ability to convert customers into repeat buyers and brand ambassadors. The concept of lifecycle marketing can be summarized as follows:

What Is Lifecycle Marketing by a Digital Marketing Agency?

From first learning about your brand to becoming your loyal brand advocate, lifecycle marketing engages customers at every stage of their journey.  As a Digital Marketing Agency CT, this is what our main focus is on: creating content for this exact purpose.  As buyers progress through the buyer’s journey stages and deeper into your lead generation sales funnel – first as prospects, then as leads and finally as customers – you need to show them different types of content that will appeal to them.

A business’s relationship with a customer doesn’t end with a sale, according to lifecycle marketing. In fact, it has a lead nurturing strategy that continues long after a sale has been made.

Our goal is to help you understand what lifecycle marketing is and what your goals should be for each stage. Additionally, we’ll discuss how customer lifecycle marketing can benefit your business. Toward the end of this article, you will find examples of marketing campaigns based on lifecycles.

The Six Stages of Lifecycle Marketing by a Digital Marketing Agency

Lifecycle marketing is interpreted differently by highly trusted marketing websites. Over at Hubspot, their internet marketing experts identify these six stages of lifecycle marketing:

1. Awareness

Your brand and products or services first become known to your customers. The conversion funnel begins with awareness at the top. Make a good first impression so that customers are more receptive to your messages later on in the buyer’s journey.

2. Engagement

When customers are ready to engage with your brand and respond to your marketing messages, done by you or a Digital Marketing Agency CT, they enter the engagement stage. It is at this point that they check out your website or search for your official social media pages.

Subscribing to newsletters and social media accounts is the most basic form of engagement. Using social media and email marketing to build client relationships is a good way to signal your intent to become more active.

3. Evaluation

To shape your customers’ opinions about whatever you offer, nudge them toward venues (e.g., social media accounts, websites, YouTube channels or blogs). In order to make the best purchase decision, they are looking for information to weigh the pros and cons of their options. In both this and the next stage, your lead nurturing strategy will be crucial.

4. Purchase

Lead nurturing campaigns and getting customers to the checkout page are the first three stages. Purchases are all about paying for orders and ensuring that payment methods are secure, easy, and reliable from the customer’s perspective. A seamless payment process can foster good relationships between buyers and sellers, while a cumbersome and unnecessary process can discourage first-time buyers from returning.

5. Deliver and Support

After their first purchase, customers are likely to drop off the marketing cycle. If you want loyal customers who will return for your products or services, you need to keep them past the lead generation sales funnel’s final phase.

Consequently, this stage benefits from customer advocacy, or the practice of prioritizing customers’ needs and addressing them. Supporting your customers reliably, timely, and sufficiently becomes second nature when you advocate for them. In lifecycle marketing campaigns, meeting or exceeding your customers’ expectations is crucial to building customer trust.  This is where hiring a Digital Marketing Agency CT may come in handy – if you are too busy to keep up with this cycle, this is something that is essential to keep up on for customer retention.  It’s ok to delegate!

6. Loyalty and Advocacy

A successful Deliver and Support stage can lead to happy customers becoming willing brand advocates. Customers who are thoroughly satisfied with your products and support services will spread the word about your brand to their friends and family. Furthermore, they will become loyal customers who keep returning to buy your products and help spread the word about your brand.

A Cycle, Not A One-And-Done Campaign by a Digital Marketing Agency

It’s important to remember that lifecycle marketing isn’t linear. Although there is an entry point (Awareness stage), it does not culminate. Rather, it is a cycle. So if you keep the marketing lifecycle going, your business can have long-term gains.

Customer Lifecycle Marketing Benefits

To close deals and generate sales, it is imperative to invest in lead nurturing campaigns. Building long-term relationships with your customers is essential for long-term success. Your business can benefit from successful lifecycle marketing campaigns in the following ways:

1. Optimizes your marketing ROI by aligning your strategy with your customers’ journeys.
2. Enhances customer service and customer retention.
3. Brand image is improved.
4. Establishes long-term relationships with customers.
5. Enhances your customer lifetime value (CLV), which measures how much revenue a customer brings into your company for the duration of their relationship with you.
6. It is more expensive to acquire new customers than to keep repeat customers, which increases cost savings.
7. For the same reason as above, time savings can be achieved.
8. By knowing the pain points of your market and how to solve them, you are able to better serve them. As a result of your customer advocacy, you can offer better products and services to your customers. Additionally, you learn how to develop an effective lead nurturing strategy.

Lead Nurturing Campaign Examples

Following are some actionable tips and strategies for each stage of customer lifecycle marketing:

Awareness

To fine-tune your lead nurturing campaigns, identify and flesh out your buyer personas.

• Conduct keyword research. Hire a Digital Marketing Agency CT to discover what words, phrases, and terms your target audience searches for online when searching for relevant topics.
• Invest in online ads. Moreover, incorporate your keyword research results into the ads you’ll launch on search engines, social media and third-party websites. A Digital Marketing Agency CT can create high-converting ads for you with the help of professional content writers.
• If your target market can be reached offline, invest in offline advertising. Use tarpaulin banners on billboards along your town’s main street and digital screens in your local mall. Businesses that serve local customers can benefit greatly from visibility.
• Collaborate with influencers in your niche. Your marketing efforts can be amplified with influencer marketing.

Engagement

Provide concise, easy-to-digest content about your products, services, or business on your landing pages.

• Create content for marketing and informational purposes. Show your customers how to use your products or the benefits of your services through explainer videos. It is convenient to publish videos on websites and share them on social media. In addition, over 80 percent of marketers report that videos increase dwell time, generate leads, and increase sales. Write blogs and guides that answer specific, everyday questions from your customers.
• Make sure you are present where your target market is. Be active on social media if it’s on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Update your business’s LinkedIn page if many people are on it.
• Identify what types of content your target market engages with most by consulting Digital Marketing Agency CT. Some digital marketing experts specialize in a particular niche or industry, which is because they’ve studied the market for years. By leveraging their insight, you can move customers faster through your lead-generation sales funnel.

Evaluation

• If possible, offer a free trial or satisfaction guarantee. First-time customers can benefit from these offers by increasing their confidence in your products and services.
• Make sure your website and other online points of sale provide accurate pricing information.
• Include customer testimonials on your product pages. By asking customers what feature they liked most, you can encourage them to give detailed reviews. Customer trust is bolstered by detailed reviews.
• Consult a Digital Marketing Agency CT to determine how your social media and eCommerce sites can achieve the highest conversion and purchase rates. By understanding how audiences engage with your on-page content, you can increase the number of users who follow your calls to action (CTAs). By working with CRO experts, you can increase your conversion rates and sales.

Purchase

• Provide multiple payment options. Online banking and payment services are commonly used by consumers in this digital age. Make payment as smooth as possible by using online payment options that your target audience uses most often, such as credit card processing gateways, PayPal, and Cash App.
• Shoppable content can be added to your website and social media posts. The buyer’s journey is shortened when content is shoppable, resulting in impulse purchases.

Deliver and Support

• If possible, provide free or lifetime customer support.
• Provide customer service hotlines, live chat, and private messaging on social media.
• Provide an FAQ page that answers frequently asked questions.
• Provide detailed answers to questions or troubleshooting concerns not addressed in FAQs in a forum. You can use a forum to answer less popular concerns without bloating your FAQ page.

Loyalty and Advocacy

• Develop a loyalty program or incentive program for repeat customers.
• Provide existing customers with first-dibs privileges.
• When customers write reviews for the first time, offer incentives. As a result, they are more likely to become brand advocates and write reviews sooner rather than later.
• If a customer adds an item to their cart, suggest complementary products.
• Email newsletter subscribers receive exclusive discounts and offers.

Conversion Rate Optimization Experts: Do You Need Them From a Digital Marketing Agency?

Customer advocacy will naturally result in marketing campaigns that promote customer loyalty and trust. When you are focused on generating leads and sales, it may be difficult to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. You can build a stronger relationship with your clients by keeping sight of their goals through conversion rate and optimization rate experts.

Experts in conversion rate optimization or CRO determine how to increase your call-to-action conversion rate. Changing the CTA’s font, color, and button style to determining questions in submission forms are all examples of these strategies. Additionally, they help you guide audiences through your marketing lifecycle naturally and voluntarily, which is crucial for lead nurturing. As a result, CRO is essential for establishing long-term client relationships.

In order to run a successful business, marketing is crucial. You’ve got to spend it, so better make the most of it.

A lifecycle marketing approach is the best option if you want long-term marketing that is cost-effective. In addition to bringing in new customers, cultivating existing customers into repeat buyers costs more, and fostering customer trust results in brand advocates.

To get into the details of executing a complete marketing lifecycle, talk to us!  The expert Digital Marketing Agency CT, High Point SEO & Marketing.

Hayley Canfield, Owner of High Point SEO & Marketing in CT