When it comes to developing a community of loyal customers around your business, having a deep understanding of your customers is critical. And the main goal of marketing is to increase income by converting more one-time purchases into loyal customers and retaining them.
Understanding customer lifestyle marketing tactics can help you attain this goal. But, exactly, what does “customer lifestyle marketing” imply?
What is Customer Lifecycle Marketing?
It is a word that encompasses all techniques used by organizations to attract, convert, retain, and leverage customers in order to increase revenue and brand awareness. All of these tactics keep customers engaged throughout their purchasing process.
When it comes to customer lifecycle marketing, we must consider the major stages that a buyer goes through from initial contact with your product or service to purchase, loyalty, and retention.
What are Customer Lifecycle Stages?
From first hearing about your brand to being one of its ambassadors, the customer must go through these stages. These are the following:
Awareness
This is when potential clients hear about your company for the first time. It’s your moment at the top of the conversion funnel to grab people’s attention and pull them deeper into the funnel.
Engagement
People begin communicating with your brand in the engagement cycle. They are interested and want to know more about your offerings, whether by subscribing to your email list, following you on social media, or scrolling on your website.
Evaluation
Decisions are the focus of the evaluation stage. This is the moment to make it easier for customers to choose your brand by providing them with accurate information on features, pricing, and value.
Purchase
Congratulations! Anyone who makes it through this stage is a customer. Your job here isn’t to promote your brand, but to make the purchase process as simple as possible so that customers can click “Buy.”
Support
Because customers tend to drop off after their first purchase, it’s critical to ensure you address their demands afterward. As a result, the support stage is all about following up to ensure that people are happy with their purchases and that they get the most out of them.
Loyalty
Customers reach this stage when they are so pleased with your product that they tell everyone they know about it. To keep their business and bring in new buyers, you’ll want to foster that advocacy.
While the stages of the lifecycle may appear to be a linear buyer journey, keep in mind that this is a cycle that should continue to repeat itself. You can’t just ignore a customer after they’ve made a transaction. It might be a lot easier to reach and exceed your marketing sales and company targets if you put work into building a smart plan.
Customer Lifecycle Marketing strategies
Customer lifecycles can be extensive and last for a long time, ideally for the duration of your company’s existence. It can, however, be only partially completed, stopping after the acquisition or engagement stages.
These customer lifecycle marketing strategies should be used to ensure that a customer stays with you for as long as possible.
Potential Prospects
The beginning of the lifetime frequently corresponds with the “top of the sales funnel,” when a potential consumer first comes into touch with the brand.
Inbound (e.g., through content marketing, SEO, or word of mouth) and outbound (e.g., through cold emailing, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, or social media advertising) are the two methods for acquiring prospects.
Before attracting prospects keep in mind that 96% of visitors to your website aren’t ready to buy. However, because your potential consumers are looking for a solution to their problem at this time, presenting them with appropriate information or services that meet their needs is essential.
Nurturing leads
This reflects the “middle of the sales funnel,” when prospects are on the verge of making a purchase and want additional information, whether it’s more details or the final price.
It implies that your potential buyers may now compare products from competing brands (including yours), conduct extensive research, and read customer reviews in order to pick the best deal.
To nurture cold leads and convert prospects, it makes sense to send customized automated email sequences with unlimited follow-ups.
More importantly, until the lead is hot enough to take action and buy from you, you should continuously supply insightful educational content on your product, including numerous sorts of sales collateral.
Customer retention
You gain a new customer when your lead makes a purchase decision and reaches the “bottom of the sales funnel,” which is usually good news because it means your business has a new revenue stream. Now, the question of how long this stream will work for you is a good one. And if you don’t have a decent retention strategy, it’s possible that it won’t last long.
It is not enough to be good; you must strive to be the best. It would be preferable to have a strategy that resulted in repeat purchases and increased brand loyalty, preventing customers from switching to competitors.
The first step in retaining customers is to find out how they feel about your product or service. Furthermore, you should endeavor to improve your customers’ pleasure on a continual basis, as 86 percent of customers are willing to spend extra for a positive customer experience.
Make sure your customer’s problem is solved with your product or service, and offer them personalized customer support that replies quickly to their requests or queries.
Make your customer feel special by offering discounts and referral bonuses, as well as free exclusive offers and VIP content in the form of newsletters, webinar access, and other forms of communication.
You can create customized loyalty programs for repeat customers and improve connection with them by soliciting feedback and employing other user-experience-enhancing strategies.
Conclusion
For organizations to earn more sales and improve overall performance, they need a well-developed customer lifestyle marketing strategy. And if email marketing is your plan for achieving these goals, you’ll need the help of a professional digital marketing company. Come to Stellar Digital since we have a talented team of digital marketers who can assist you with your project. You can also learn more about our email marketing services by visiting stellardigital.in.
