No matter how clever your marketing and sales strategies are, you’ll never fully understand their effectiveness without evaluating how your customers react to each move you make.
Luckily, there’s an easy way to check out your process.
By using the lifecycle strategy, you can easily identify which potential customers are most likely to purchase your products and track every stage of their customer journey.
It’s crucial to understand each step of the customer lifecycle, so we broke down each stage for you below:
Subscriber
Identifying your subscribers is an important first step in the customer lifecycle. Typically, potential customers become subscribers by agreeing to receive more information through an email or website signup.
By starting with customers who are already showing interest in your company or product, you are focusing on legitimate buyers rather than wasting time marketing to customers who either aren’t interested in your product or aren’t in a position to buy.
Leads
Your subscribing customers become potential leads by taking additional action, such as downloading a one-pager for additional information or interacting with other functions you offer on your website.
Once you’ve separated the subscribers from the leads, your leads become a top priority, and are now in the perfect position to be open-minded to your marketing efforts.
Marketing Qualified Lead
Once your potential customers are proven leads, your marketing team will begin contacting them. This can be done with additional emails providing valuable information and CTAs for interested customers to take action.
When a potential customer shows enough interest and appears likely to purchase your product, your marketing team will approve the MQL and pass the potential customer along to your sales team.
Sales Qualified Lead
The sales team evaluation is the final checkpoint to discovering if the customer is a legitimate buyer.
The sales team will contact the potential customers directly. Through these conversations, the sales team will try to close a deal if possible but are primarily gauge the potential customer’s likelihood of purchasing your product.
If the potential customer realistically wants to reach a deal, they are deemed an SQL. The sales team will pursue them until a deal is closed or the potential customer determines they are no longer interested.
Opportunity
The opportunity stage is an added bonus in the customer lifecycle.
Once the potential customer is labeled as an SQL, the sales team will consider if any additional contacts or parties are involved in your initial deal, which could lead to another sale.
By evaluating your opportunities, your team is more likely to find customers with similar interests to purchasing customers rather than starting the process with potential customers you know much less about.
Customer
Hurray! You’ve closed the deal and turned your potential customer into a real customer!
However, the work isn’t done quite yet. You should continually check in to ensure your customers stay engaged with your company. This will ensure your customers' satisfaction and increase their chances of becoming repeat customers.
Evangelist
A loyal customer is often far more powerful than the typical marketing strategy.
When customers are happy with your product, they become more likely to spread the word to their colleagues. In turn, these colleagues are much more likely to trust your company and will often come to your sales team independently.
The greater your number of ‘Evangelist Customers’ the less work you’ll have to put into your own customer lifecycle to attract new business.
Need Help Discovering Your Own Lifecycle?
Using our expertise at Gorilla Marketing, we’ll help your business craft a top-notch marketing strategy to engage your customers and keep them coming back for more.
Ready to improve your customer lifecycle? Contact us today for expert advice and strategies.
