Building a loyal and engaged customer base can help a business thrive. Providing great customer service and offering loyalty rewards can help you keep customers engaged and happy. Around 80% of a company’s future revenue will be generated by 20% of its existing customers. Becoming familiar with the customer’s lifecycle and how well your company is performing at each stage of this journey is important.
If you want to keep existing clients loyal and attract attention from other consumers, then you need to become familiar with the term customer lifecycle. Here is more information about what the customer lifecycle is and why it matters in digital marketing.
The Definition of Customer Lifecycle
Most business owners have heard the term customer lifecycle batted around, but few of them actually know what it means. The term customer lifecycle is used to describe every step of a buyer’s journey. A customer’s lifecycle starts from the moment they enter your marketing funnel. Below, we will discuss the various customer lifecycle stages and how to use them to market and upsell your audience.
What You Need To Know About Customer Lifecycle Stages
A business owner’s main goal with their marketing campaigns is moving consumers through their sales funnel and converting them into new customers. Optimizing how you market products/services to potential and existing customers is much easier when collecting data about customer lifecycles. There are a few customer lifecycle stages you need to become familiar with, which we will cover below.
The Discovery Stage
The initial point of contact a potential customer has with your brand is referred to as the discovery stage. Generally, this discovery will take place with things like a Google search, a cold marketing email or even a referral from other customers.
The Education Stage
Once your business has made initial contact with a potential customer, the education phase will start to occur. This education will be provided with the help of white papers, blogs posts, webinars and social media posts. The main goal you should have during this phase is informing a potential customer about the products/services offered by your business and how they benefit them.
The Purchase Stage
If you are successful in your attempt to educate consumers about your products/services, you will motivate them to make a purchase. During this stage, the main goal you should have is to make the purchasing process as easy and pleasant as possible.
The Post-Purchase Engagement Phase
Ensuring new customers have a great experience is crucial to the long-term success of your business. Once a person has made their first purchase, you need to work on engaging with them. This engagement can take place via a personalized email or even a phone call. If you decide to send out an email, be sure to include discounts for products/services related to what a new customer just purchased. This will help you encourage a new customer to make another purchase in a relatively short amount of time.
Now that you know more about the customer lifecycle, it is time to get to work. With the advice in this article, you can engage with consumers at every stage of their buying journeys.