Marketing was once restricted to flyers, newspapers, billboards, magazines, and TV. Today, marketing is a Facebook page, a lead magnet, or an Instagram Story.
Marketing continues to evolve as it gets introduced to new technologies and platforms. Compared to outdoor billboards, there’s a lot more digital real estate online—on the web pages you visit and on social media networks. Because of this increase in digital dependence combined with the lifestyles of mobile users, marketing is changing the way consumers go through the buyer’s journey.
This is where lifecycle marketing comes in.
What is Lifecycle Marketing?
Lifecycle marketing is designed to build better relationships with prospects and customers. From the first touchpoint to customer acquisition and retention, the strategy focuses on providing an excellent customer experience—even after making the sale.
Instead of focusing on separate campaigns, you analyze the entirety of the customer journey in an integrated manner to understand what happens at each lifecycle stage, so you can offer more relevant and optimized content at each particular stage.
Modern buyers have become too unpredictable. Their quick access to information and products or services contribute to this new consumer behavior. Meaning, attracting consumers and walking them through the traditional sales funnel stages may now seem as an aggressive sales tactic.
Lisa Gevelber, Google’s vice president of marketing for the Americas, names the three new buyer behaviors or types as follows:
- The “well-advised” consumer – These are the buyers who often reach for their smartphones to get informed and make the right decisions—big or small. For instance, they would turn to their smartphones for advice when looking for the “best laptop” if ever they’re looking for a new one.
- The “right here” consumer – These are the buyers who expect their digital experiences–including shopping—to be tailored to their physical location. For instance, if they wanted to look for a hot pot restaurant nearby, they’ll use keywords like “near me” or area name in their search query.
- The “right now” consumer – These are the buyers who have purchasing power anytime, anywhere. For instance, they’d use their mobile phone to get things done at the last minute (e.g., restaurant reservation or hotel accommodation reservation).
The 4 Phases of Lifecycle Marketing
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The Attract Phase
Similar to the prospecting stage in the standard sales cycle, the ‘attract’ phase focuses on finding new customers. But unlike the traditional sales cycle, you can communicate with a prospect and build a relationship with them at this stage. You can answer any questions they might have and gather their contact information so you can open a dialogue ro start the next phase, lead nurturing.
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The Nurture Phase
This is the stage where your prospects begin to look at their options and compare them. They’re still unsure which among their options have the best offer, and they still have a lot to consider. They’re weighing the pros and cons of each.
At this stage, you neeed to continue providing valuable content to build strong, lasting relationships with prospects. You can further establish trust by injecting information about the value your business will provide for them, which drives us to the next phase.
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The Convert Phase
By the ‘convert’ stage, you’ve become a favorable option. The client is likely ready to choose between or among the shortlisted brands. How you handle and interact with them at this stage will make or break your sale.
It’s helpful to send personalized messages, custom campaigns, and follow-ups addressing their concerns. At this point, you should looking out for buyer intent signals and making the journey from lead to customer as seamless as possible.
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The Delight Phase
After closing the sale, it’s important to continue nurturing your customers and keep your communication lines open for them. This spells the difference between a one-time customer and a loyal brand advocate. Since it costs 5x as much to close a new customer than it does to retain one, you hope they become the latter.
The Benefits of Adopting Lifecycle Marketing
Attracting consumers, convincing them to buy your product, and building a relationship with them has always been the foundation of marketing. Here are some ways lifecycle marketing benefits your current digital marketing strategies.
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Email marketing conversion rates will increase
Since a part of doing lifecycle marketing is understanding an individual prospect’s pain points and providing them content that addresses these issues, lifecycle emails get 624% higher conversion responses than generic, bulk emails. And if you’re doing it right, you’ll be driving anywhere between 25% and 40% in ecommerce revenue.
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Lead nurturing will be more successful
Knowing which stage of the buying process your prospect is in allows you to send personalized messages and valuable pieces of content their way. When they download the lead magnet, it signals where the buyer is, helping you align your content marketing materials to meet the individual needs of the prospect.
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Sales and marketing teams will be more aligned
Acquainting your sales and marketing teams to understand the lifecycle stages help them better understand why visitors are on your website.
- Is it their first time to visit your site?
- Are they looking at service pages (maybe they’re starting to compare)?
Your sales and marketing tactics are inclined to look closely at the pain points to determine what the next step should be. This supports the objectives of both teams and optimizes efforts to achieve your business goals.
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It will boost sales
Taking a proactive approach in understanding your prospect’s problems and being able to provide them information right when they need it— that’s providing a good customer experience. That’s how you boost your sales and retain loyal customers.
Keep in mind that when it comes to making a sale, consistency is key. In fact, consistent brand presentation across all platforms boosts revenue by up to 23%.
A Marketing Framework for Modern Buyers
As a marketer, you know that the marketing landscape is ever-evolving, with all the new technologies changing the way consumers behave. That’s why it pays to remain up-to-date with the trends to improve your marketing strategies continuously.
Lifecycle marketing brings you back to the goal of inbound marketing methodology, which is to draw people to your business organically. With this approach, you’re maximizing all your channels and interacting with consumers on different devices—a multichannel process instead of optimizing individual touchpoints such as buying attention through ads.
Lifecycle marketing focuses on earning the interest of your target audience—just like inbound marketing.
Incorporating lifecycle marketing tactics into your strategies may take time, but it’s an excellent framework to serve audiences who are looking for businesses they can trust
Curious to learn more about how you can adapt this to your business? Shoot us an email!
