Lifecycle Marketing: What It Is and Why It Matters to You

The world of marketing continues to evolve and change, with new techniques and terms popping up frequently. One term that you should be very familiar with is “lifecycle marketing”. Not sure what it is or how it might impact your business? Let’s explore the topic a bit.

Lifecycle marketing is nothing more than giving your audience what they want at each stage of their relationship with your business – from initial targeting and attraction to education, offering, closing, and retention activities. It is the process of identifying, developing, and then delivering communications and experiences that your audience members need, want, and value.

It is a shift away from thinking about customer acquisition and retention in the form of only funnels, and toward a more organic way of seeing the relationship that you form with your audience members.

Traditionally, the sales process was seen as a straight line – customers moved from engagement to evaluation to purchasing to advocacy, and then remained in that endpoint. However, life is not quite so cut and dried. The reality is that, like most other aspects of the real world, customer acquisition and management is cyclical.

A lifecycle marketing strategy allows you to align your business goals with your customer’s behaviour and improve the lifetime value of your customers, improve ROI, and deliver greater value to your customers over time by never assuming that advocacy is the final stage of the sales funnel. Your strategy should be to move from advocacy back to the beginning of the cycle once more with engagement.

It is important to understand that there is no single, overarching, broadly accepted definition of lifecycle management. It varies from organisation to organisation, and industry to industry. However, all definitions share some key points.One of those key points is personalisation. That is, all marketing materials must be customised to the consumer to whom you are speaking at that moment. Email marketing also plays a significant role, as this provides you with unique opportunities for personalisation. Other key elements include consistency in voice and branding, transparency, clear communication to avoid misunderstandings, and providing value beyond what the customer expects.