Every business understands the importance of incorporating the customer lifecycle into their marketing strategy as doing so dramatically increases engagement and increases the probability of your existing customers making more purchases. Customer lifecycle marketing is a brilliant strategy to maximise sales through existing customers.
Many sales opportunities are often lost when a company fails to work in the customer lifecycle to their marketing efforts. Understanding the basic fundamentals of a customer lifecycle equips you tactfully engage with your customers to increase revenue. This type of engagement also increases customer satisfaction.
It’s a great idea to complete a digital marketing course to learn how to approach and nurture existing customers at every stage of their purchasing lifecycle. A digital marketing course will give you valuable insight into everything you need to know about customer lifecycle marketing.
So much more than a one-time deal
Good business practice is never about a one-time sale to a customer. The most successful and profitable companies are constantly building better relationships with their customers. As a business, you should be looking to move from a one-time sale to keeping your customers coming back again and again. This can be achieved by effectively working in your customer lifecycle to your marketing strategy. Every business needs a new customer to become a regular purchaser and to stay engaged long after the initial sale.
Customer lifecycle marketing, or CLM, all begins with putting the right processes in place to nurture and engage with your customers. Optimising existing clients has proven time and time again a much cheaper alternative to attracting new customers. So, it’s worthwhile to invest in customer lifecycle marketing as a long-term marketing strategy.
The never-ending quest for brand loyalty
If your business wants to move forward to increase revenue it’s vital to make sure you have a well-thought-out and effective customer lifecycle marketing plan. Increasing brand loyalty from your customers is a huge part of customer lifecycle marketing.
The explosion of social media platforms has even more so increased the need for brand loyalty as there are so many competitors advertising via these interactive platforms that you need to instill an ongoing solid loyalty to your brand from your customers. However, it’s important to keep in mind that brand loyalty is only a part of your customer lifecycle marketing strategy and there are many other steps to take to build long-lasting, fruitful customer relationships.
Benefits of nurturing a customer during their lifecycle
There are many benefits associated with successfully nurturing the customer lifecycle in your organisation, such as brand loyalty, time-saving and lowering costs. However, the most important benefit of nurturing the customer lifecycle is an increase in revenue. It’s a fact that between 25% and 40% of all revenue comes from existing customers. As a modern business, you’ll need to make sure your customers come back again.
The stages of a customer lifecycle
There are many stages of a customer’s lifecycle and a different approach must be adopted for each stage. As a business, you’ll want to avoid a customer dropping off the radar and taking their business to your competitor.
Let’s take a closer look at the most important stages of the customer lifecycle.
- A lead – A promising lead is a great way to obtain some more information such as their place of work, their email address, and name. A great way to get more information from a lead is to entice them to sign up for your newsletter or blog.
- Promising prospects – It’s a well-known fact that not all visitors to your website will offer their information up and will more than likely visit your website a few more times before becoming a customer.
- One time buyer customer – This description refers to someone who has visited your website and has completed a purchase, however, has not yet become a regular customer. These types of customers need to be nurtured carefully and they are valuable when it comes to re-marketing and engagement.
- Repeat customer – As the name suggests, a repeat customer is someone who has completed a purchase transaction with your business more than once.
Loyal customer – This group of clients is the most valuable in the customer lifecycle marketing initiative.
