What is a Customer Lifecycle?
The customer lifecycle is the journey a customer goes through when interacting with a company, its people, and its products and services. The customer lifecycle consists of five distinct stages: awareness, consideration, purchase, loyalty, and advocacy. Each stage requires different techniques to engage customers.
What is Customer Lifecycle Management?
Customer lifecycle management is the process of tracking the customer journey and optimizing customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty at each stage. The objective of customer lifecycle management is to improve the customer experience in order to win more customers, build value in the business relationship, and increase revenue through stronger win rates and stronger customer lifetime value.
What are the Customer Lifestyle Stages?
There are five stages of the customer lifecycle:
- Awareness: Buyers become aware of a product or service. They may learn about it through traditional advertising, word of mouth, or digital marketing. At this stage, buyers are just beginning to explore their options and gain an understanding of what solutions are available to them.
- Consideration: Buyers are researching potential solutions and evaluating them based on their needs. They’re looking for specific features, services, and pricing that meet their requirements. It’s important for B2B companies to provide clear and accurate information about their products to help buyers make informed decisions. Offering ungated content is a huge advantage since it removes friction in the customer research process.
- Purchase: Buyers make a purchase decision. It’s important for B2B companies to have a well-defined sales process that’ll help buyers make a purchase decision.
- Loyalty: Once a customer has purchased a product or service, it’s important to build a lasting relationship with them. B2B companies should focus on providing excellent customer service. For many companies, this means providing smooth onboarding and training processes to make sure customers get the desired value from the product or service. Loyal customers may also be rewarded with discounts and opportunities to preview new features or products.
- Advocacy: Customers become advocates for the products and services they have purchased. They may refer new customers to the company or write positive reviews about the product.
Best Customer Lifecycle Management Software in 2023
A key component of managing a successful customer lifecycle is having the right tools. Popular tools include:
- Salesforce CRM
- HubSpot
- Microsoft Dynamics 365
- 6sense
With 6sense, sales teams can easily access the most up-to-date and accurate customer data, allowing them to better identify, understand, and target customer needs. This in turn helps them create more effective sales and marketing strategies that drive growth and maximize ROI.
6sense is the ideal tool for lifecycle management, and its AI-driven insights can help companies make more informed decisions and maximize customer lifetime value.
