22. Stages of A Successful Lifecycle Marketing Plan: How To Implement Them.

This post will be a bit long but it's like eating a well cooked meal. Very digestible. You'll enjoy it. 

Now that you've gotten an introduction to the idea of Life Cycle Marketing,  let us now understand the stages of a lifecycle marketing plan. As earlier mentioned, it may or may not be like other businesses' plans but these stages recur. 

1. Awareness

Naturally, before a person can patronise your business, they have to first know who you are. This is the first stage. This is when a prospective customer becomes aware that your business exists. It's also the opportunity to tell them "Welcome" and "Here's why you should stick with us". 

How to do this? Content. This is your opportunity to attract so many members of your target audience and you do this with content that is easily digestible, simple and educative to reel them in.

In the Awareness stage, you: 

• Create content that best describes your business and how you can help those reading the content. 

• Use the right keywords. Keywords that you know your audience will be searching for online. This is your moment.

• Create targeted audiences for every buyer persona you wish to contact. This will help you know who you're addressing and how best to address them.

• Use FAQs that your customers ask. Create content that answers popular questions asked by both your present and prospective audiences. 

• Create an ad, something that's inviting and put those ads on popular sites online where your potential market could be hanging out. 

• Acquire leads by all means, yes. But also be sure to retain those leads. This you'll still do with content but let's see the second stage. 

2. Engagement

In this stage, those leads have noticed your business or company and they indicate that they are interested in what you do. They give you this energy by following, liking, subscribing, commenting, etc. 

Keep them on your site. That's the game. 

This is your moment to share even better, well phrased offers in such a way that these interested prospective customers can begin to have a more solid idea about you. It's about branding. Engage back with great content too. 

Your great content/engagement could come from: 

• Answering questions in the comment section. 

• Designing engaging landing pages that are easy to use. 

• Use video demos to present your services or products.

• Making helpful blog posts, guides or tools that address customer problems with solutions.

• Email campaigns to sensitise and build trust with your audience.

• Examples or case studies with return customers that tell them working with you is their best idea yet. 

You have to know, 83% of those who engage with your business online expect you to respond immediately. That's the time for you to get personal and super helpful. You have to be ready and responsive and that's what will lead into the next stage. 

3. Evaluation/Conversion: 

This is the third stage and the best time to make your brand solid in the eyes of your still prospective customers. By now, you should be providing them the exact information they need so they can decide to choose you and do so fast. 

They'll make that decision as soon as they can compare your prices, features and ultimately value as against other brands competing for their attention. 

They've become impressed with what you offer and now you want them to make the purchase decision fast. What do you do? Make the buying decision easy. 

What do you think a customer wants to see when they compare your offer to another company's offer? In case I didn't mention it, this is your thinking stage too.

• Clear Pricing. You don't want to be ambiguous in your pricing. Put it out in full so they can see and compare with other brands. 

• Testimonials are important. I know reading the paragraph above had you wondering "How do I ensure they buy?". You don't. But you make their decision to buy you easy. Show them what others have experienced using your service or product. Build Trust.

• Use free trials to make them confident enough to invest in your business. 

• Send an email that senior leader may be wondering about to make pitching easier. 

• What does your company's customer service experience look like especially for after-purchase support? Let them have a feel of it. Paint a picture. Or give a peek. 

What you want to do is make your customer feel special. Of course they may be one in a thousand but every automation and content should be sensitive to them personally, not as a member of a large group of people. 

Personalization will help make conversion faster. So be personal.

4. Purchase/Retention

At this stage, they buy your product. You can officially quit calling them prospective customers and call them a customer. You have to make sure that this buy is easy too. Your "buy" button should not be glitchy. A delayed sale may never be made. 

Once they make that call and buy what you're selling, what you want to do next is you want to keep them coming back to buy from you. Not enough money is spent on retention of customers and this is bad for business. 

93% of customers are likely to buy repeatedly if a company's customer service is excellent. People want to be related as actual people not robots and this affects you. You can increase your company profits if you offer great service and experience for your customers, they'll become repeat buyers. 

How? 

• Set up support options that are easy to use like chat, live messaging, FAQ pages etc. Up to 65% of customers like to help themselves in simple service issues. Help them configure this. 

• Offer a discount code for another purchase. 

• Create targeted ads with more offers that complement the first buy they made. (Eg. A special winter fur coat for someone who just bought a bunch of cold gear)

• Emails that help customers use what they bought from you. 

What you don't want to do in this stage is let your customer figure things out by themselves. This is the fastest way to lose a customer. Intrude in their usage of your product. Help them figure it out. 

5. Support.

In this stage, Follow up is Key. You want to serve your customer's post-purchase needs because more often than not, they want to drop off and are looking for reasons to not come back after that first purchase. 

6. Loyalty. 

This is the stage when your customers can't stop telling any and everyone about your brand. Their experience is paramount to this being a resounding success. Through this stage, they can reel in new customers and become your advocates for the first stage in this cycle. 

This is the final stage but it's a cycle so it must keep going back to the beginning stage. Remember your business goals. Build a relationship with your customer and have a well thought out lifecycle plan. That's only the beginning of reaching and exceeding your goals.