Everyone wants new leads, but B2B marketers who excel in today’s buyer-driven marketplace create integrated marketing strategies that revolve around the full customer lifecycle.
In any market, it’s important to define the ideal customer lifecycle. As security solution providers, there may be several options for customers to engage a business during the buyer’s journey, but only 20% of B2B marketers are using a customer lifecycle approach as their marketing strategy. (Source: Demand Metric Benchmark Report )
You may have a target customer in the healthcare market, for example, that has a fully integrated security solution across an entire campus. They’re looking for a new company to handle future installations and devise a maintenance contract. You may have another target prospect that is building a new facility and has no security equipment. The two customers are at very different stages of the buyer’s journey. Awareness of the customer’s journey is important to your defined life cycle stages. Each stage of the buyer’s journey requires specific marketing content.
Life Cycle Stages
The security customer’s lifecycle is often divided into five different stages: Attract, Capture, Convert, Retain, Advocate.
Attract is the stage in which your customer may encounter online and other marketing materials. Brand awareness is realized during this stage. It’s critical because much of your content needs to be available before you realize that a potential customer is consuming it.
Capture is the stage in which companies have an opportunity to assign an identity to a potential client. For example, if you have produced a helpful guide for healthcare facilities that outlines the top 10 ways to protect a hospital emergency department, you may ask for their name and email address in exchange for the free resource.
Convert is when a potential customer has identified themselves and their interests converting from visitor to lead to a sale. You may further engage the customer to provide resources for their interests and needs. This is also known as the nurturing stage of the lifecycle where tools like autoresponders will help you save time and become more effective.
Retain is the timeframe in which the customer relationship is maintained after the completion of a project. Some call this post-sale marketing. Enterprise-class customers will need further support for additional projects and maintenance. The odds that they will engage you moving forward, aside from your excellent project delivery, are increased by staying in touch with your customer. Focus on security trends and new technology solutions. You’ll want to keep your brand in front of the customer, so they’ll think to contact you first.
Advocate is the timeframe in which your customer may tell another potential customer about your company, capabilities, and their experiences with you. An unsolicited positive referral is the ideal way to grow your business. With all your "Attract" materials in place, the referred customer can do some research on their own before engaging your business development team.
Life Cycle Marketing
Vector Firm’s content marketing solution can help your business deploy an “always on” marketing approach to reach prospects and customers throughout their journey to becoming a loyal client. Request a Discovery Call today – complete the form below to get started.
