Marketing Advice That Matters
There are various strategies for lead generation that are followed by customer conversion and retention. The dynamic sales world has two kinds of methods: sales funnel and lifecycle marketing or customer journey. As a lifecycle marketing agency will tell you, these strategies have unique goals and structures of their own. This guest blog intends to reflect on the two strategies and their similarities and differences. After reading this article, we assure you that you will gain a better understanding of these models so you can decide which is best for nurturing leads.
Sales Funnel
The sales funnel method has a fundamental principle that works by factoring in a customer’s mental makeup from the initial stage, piqued interest in a brand, researching the brand, and the final call-to-action for making a purchase. The end goal of the sales funnel method is to boost customer conversion and revenue.
Companies review the analytics at each stage of the funnel to plan their annual budgets and determine which ideas are paying off.
Before choosing between a sales funnel and the customer journey marketing model, it helps to know the facts. So here’s how the stages of the sales funnel unfold, involving the four points of customer contact, generally known as AIDA.
Awareness: Here, the customer discovers the brand, and their interest is piqued. The awareness stage is where you need to educate them. Marketing strategies, such as paid advertising, social media marketing, SEO, and organic search engine results, play a role in subtle lead generation.
Research: The research stage of the funnel provides your future consumer with the required information to learn about your company. Several tools, such as FAQs, custom content, live videos, apps, and images help navigate and ultimately create interest in your brand.
Decision-making: Every customer needs a little nudge from time to time to make a final decision to purchase a service or product from your business. Customers are paying extra attention to what you have to offer. As a result, lead generation at this stage involves free trials, exclusive offers, and incentives.
Action: Prospects make it to the final portion of the funnel and become customers. Your next task is to convert them into loyal and repeating customers by renewing interest in them.
Lifecycle marketing
Lifecycle marketing, or customer journey marketing, covers the business’s outreach, the customer’s experience from brand discovery to making a final purchase, and the retention of those leads. Similar to a sales funnel, lifecycle marketing has distinct stages to achieve targeted goals for a brand.
Lifecycle marketing agency creates long-term returning customers, and in turn, fosters brand loyalty. This model helps brands revamp their products and services according to a customer’s needs. A lifecycle marketing agency will support brands from the initial phase to the end.
Gain a thorough understanding of the marketing model of customer journey by going through the stages mentioned below.
Awareness: The customer discovers your brand and has the interest to learn more. Lead magnets and high-quality content will ensure that the future customer receives the necessary information that will turn them into a potential lead. Your content must be value-focused and less aggressive because leads can easily get turned off by a pushy sales pitch.
Intent: Marketing efforts aim to make customer interaction through live chat or video chat using different applications. This appears more informal and human and thus reduces the time spent by your marketing teams. Make sure to use strong and clear CTAs, webinars, client success stories, and lead magnets. This stage combines the “research” and “decision-making” stages of the sales funnel method.
Decision: Based on your brand’s hard work displayed in the previous stages, the customer is finally ready to make a purchase. It’s best for lifecycle marketers to encourage customer feedback on third-party websites to engage these new customers, understand their likes and preferences, and answer questions related to your products.
Loyalty: This stage focuses on retaining customers and converting them to brand advocates. Lifecycle marketing strategy is more interested in a customer’s overall experience based on their trust and loyalty. Regular follow-up emails, thank you cards, email marketing, and exclusive access to new services will keep the customer experience fresh to build a strong and successful business.
Choosing the right support: a lifecycle marketing agency can help
The sales funnel appears deceptive, dishonest, and will not guarantee long-term customers. It’s more focused on repeated purchases rather than the customer itself. Modern customers have way more information at their fingertips and require much more than just a sales pitch. Lifecycle marketing is not easy, which is why you should choose an excellent lifecycle marketing agency.
