Making the Leap from Funnel Marketing to Lifecycle Marketing

April 6, 2021 Stan

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: customer expectations are changing, and organizations need to level up their game in order to earn and retain customer’s business. All joking aside this is the new reality for marketers. For a long time, lead generation was the name of the game, and it served us well. Focusing on attracting and converting prospects allowed us to embrace marketing automation and create relevant, targeted campaigns. Now it is time to take this further.

Lifecycle marketing is all about understanding, engaging, and delighting customers at every stage of their journey from prospect to brand advocate. As marketers, we need to track customer engagement in order to anticipate needs, meet customers on their preferred channels, and extend the relationship beyond the initial sale. To do this effectively, marketers need to think in terms of omnichannel experiences, deeper segmentation practices, and personalized content.

Unsure of where to begin? Always start with the customer.

The move from funnel marketing to lifecycle marketing requires a shift in perspective where the customer and their journey is front and center, not our products or selling process. Take a step back to evaluate where your organization stands in these key areas:

Armed with a better understanding of key customer insights, you can identify and prioritize areas that will help you expand your engagement activities. Marketers will always need to attract and convert new buyers, but we can also retain and grow the relationships we worked so hard to develop. If you have a solid foundation built – congratulations! Challenge yourself to find ways to create brand advocates out of your existing customers. Continue to optimize programs and segment audiences to progressively deliver more personalized and relevant experiences. Much of this will rely on having a highly integrated tech stack and real-time data insights. Once you know the types of experiences you need to provide, you can make more informed decisions about technology capabilities and ensure you have the right data available.

Where are you on this journey? If you’re wondering where to get started or need a hand to make advancements, let us know. Relationship One is always here to help.

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