An important part of digital marketing and something really important to know during your Apprenticeship, is the customer lifecycle! If you aren’t familiar with this, we’ve put together this breakdown of all the key points, stages and parts for you!
What is the Customer Lifecycle?
The customer lifecyle is looking at the overall time a customer spends with your brand through five key stages. This allows you to gain an understanding of customer behaviours and work out how to best optimise your business to maintain the interest of your customers for a longer period of time as each stage is driven by how your business interacts with the public.
The 5 Stages
Create Brand Awareness
Make sure your content stands out and catches the attention of the ever scrolling user. Maybe consider using paid promotion to keep your content popping up? Or influencers to endorse your business and add a sense of trust? Think about how you can get the customer to consciously notice your brand.
Consideration – Encourage the user look into your brand or service
So you’ve managed to catch a potential customer or users attention? Now, let’s get them to look further into it! Show them the value you can bring to them and get them searching and researching for more. Maybe even consider enticing potential customers in using promotional offerings?
Purchase – Get users to buy or use your service
New customer in the bag! You’ve been able to engage the user enough to have complete a monetary exchange between them and your business – success!
Retention – Keep users coming back
So they’ve brought from you once? Why don’t you try to build a better relationship with the customer to keep them coming back? Loyalty is equal to long term income. Keep your content new and exciting, don’t let the customer get bored and make sure you are staying in the sights. Maybe a monthly email with new brand updates? Seasonal promotions and discounts?
Advocacy – Get users shouting about your business
So you have yourself a loyal and returning customer – perfect! Now let’s be so good that they can’t resist shouting about your business! Tell their friends, family, dogs and cats! Maybe even encourage them to write reviews as part of their online advocacy.
How do we measure the success of our Customer Lifecycle?
It’s a bit numerical, but it’s a fairly simple task to work out the success of your Customer Lifecycle. Check out our cheat sheet below:
(Customer revenue per year x Duration of the relationship in year) / Total costs of acquiring and serving the customer = Customer Lifetime Value
Helpful Key Terms
- Cost Per Acquisition – The cost to your business of gaining a new customer through the activities you did at the Awareness stage, including advertising and marketing.
- Transaction Value – How much are customers spending per purchase? Does this go up or down after the purchase stage as you go into the retention stage?
- Transaction Frequency – How often do your customers at the retention and loyalty stages purchase? Does the frequency stay constant, or does it increase or level off over time? Are there any obvious patterns year on year?
- Engagement metrics – Customers who have reached the advocacy stage, and some of those at the retention stage, may be more likely to engage with your brand. How often do they open your emails? Do they follow you on social media, and if so, how often do they engage with your content through liking or commenting features?
The customer lifecycle is just one of the technical elements that you will learn during you time doing Digital Marketer’s Apprenticeship. You can learn more about what to expect from your Level 3 – Digital Marketing Apprenticeship on our site and make sure you Be sure to sign up for our emailing list below and receive a FREE information pack on any apprenticeship of your choice!