What is lifecycle marketing? It is a framework for managing your client process and relationships through every phase of their different interactions with your company.
Doing business is about building relationships with leads and prospects, eventually turning them into customers. The most successful businesses continue to maintain and nurture their customer relationships, leading to repeat sales, referrals and testimonials.
No matter your business, the lifecycle marketing framework will help you identify your “touch points” – the different interactions people have with your company – so that you can plug any holes that might prevent you from continually nurture these relationships for maximum lifetime value.
Too many businesses drop the ball in one area or another, particularly in failing to follow up. Remember that a prospective client may not always be ready to buy anything when they first come into your funnel (visit your website, sign up for your email list, download a report, etc.).
By following up and maintaining contact, you’ll make sure they remember you when they are ready, instead of going with a competitor because you’ve lost touch with them.
Mapping your customer lifecycle
Are you convinced that understanding the customer lifecycle of your business will help you get and keep more customers? Great! The next step is to map out the customer lifecycle in your particular business.
There are three stages of the lifecycle marketing, and each has three phases. It is vital that you have clear processes in each of these areas, so you don’t have any holes where customers can slip away.
Phase 1 is Attract
Attract has three phases:
1. Target your ideal customer
2. Attract interest
3. Collect leads – people who sign up to receive regular messages from you
Phase 2 is Sell
Sell has three phases:
1. Educate buyers
2. Offer solutions
3. Close the sale
Phase 3 is Wow
Wow has three phases:
1. Deliver and wow customers
2. Offer more solutions
3. Generate referrals & testimonials
For a visual look at these stages and phases, click here to download a free infographic PDF, courtesy of Infusionsoft and Beaver Pond Enterprises.
At this point, you may already have a sense of where the holes are in your business. For example: Do you have a set process for wowing your customers and offering them additional products and services? How do you educate prospective customers about what you offer? Are you capturing contact information from everyone who expresses an interest in your company?
To determine exactly where you need to build up your lifecycle marketing efforts, click here to download a simple self-assessment.
Once you have a clearer picture of the exact phases and stages that need improvement, you’re ready for the Lifecycle Marketing Workbook. This free resource asks questions that guide you through creating marketing materials and processes uniquely suited to your business and customers.
Click here for your free copy of the Lifecycle Marketing Workbook.
Once you identify the holes and fill them, it can have a huge impact on your business. Some business owners wonder, “How do we design the right lifecycle marketing strategies?” That is going to be informed by your brand and your vision.
Start there, and that will inform how and what you deliver to your clients and prospects, how you’ll interact, and what kind of relationship you’ll have at each of these stages.
Then you’ll look at each process and decide what you can automate and what has to be done manually, and how to set that up.
Mapping out the customer lifecycle is one of the first things I do when consulting a small business. Even though they may have specific frustrations they want to solve, it’s important to go through this process and weed out ALL the areas of your business that have holes where you’re losing customers.
Some of those frustrations may still be under the surface, but they are there. We don’t need to wait for them to become obvious; we can take a proactive approach.
I highly recommend that all small businesses complete this customer lifecycle mapping process. It will greatly serve you to identify and close these holes.
For a visual look at the lifecycle marketing stages and phases, click here to download the free infographic PDF.
To determine exactly where you need to build up your lifecycle marketing efforts, click here to download a simple self-assessment.
To design your own lifecycle marketing process, download your free copy of the Lifecycle Marketing Workbook.
Have questions about Lifecycle Markting? Submit them in the form below to get answers.
Vania Clark-Butler is an Infusionsoft Certified Consultant (ICC) and self-proclaimed power user since 2005. Process oriented, she shares Infusionsoft best practices to help you get set up the right way to optimize your software. For fun, she enjoys cooking, Kundalini yoga, business podcasts, and spending time outdoors with her husband and their two exuberant boxers exploring the Arizona desert. - See more at: http://www.automatingsuccess.com.
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