Customer Life Cycle in Digital Marketing

This is our first post on The CLICKS Technologies’ Blog. We hope to put more and more of these as and when possible and share some of our knowledge, experience and interesting incidents via these posts.

Today, we are trying to cover one of the most basic yet most essential topic in Digital Marketing and that’s the Customer Life Cycle in Digital Marketing. We are sure you must have already started hearing about various jargon like Adwords, Analytics, SMO, SEO etc. from various industry people and started to get some idea of what those are. While we intend to cover those in some of our upcoming posts, we thought, it makes all the sense to first start with the Customer Life Cycle in Digital Marketing as the topic to give you an overview of it all. This will also help you place various dots where they belong and then get more clarity on what do you need where in your DM Plan.

Here are the FIVE important Stages of your Online Customer’s Life Cycle:

Awareness

The first stage for your product or service in the Online World is to get noticed by your potential Consumers/ Customers. Unless they are aware of you, they will never thinking of buying your product or service. The first basic step for you to do is to have a Website of your own. Without a website, there is no point in going forward with other DM activities, generally. Brand Awareness is then created online using Google Display Ads, Google Search Ads, Google Video Ads, Social Media Ads, and Affiliate Marketing. Specific landing pages dedicated to the product/ service being promoted are recommended for more qualified leads generation. Device focus can be added in the targeting methods to reach out to only those who matter.

Consideration

This is the stage where Customer is now aware of your Brand but is not sure whether to purchase or engage with you yet. This is when the current-day intelligent customer will resort to conducting online research on his own, apart from offline discussions with friends etc. During this stage, he will conduct both branded and non-branded searches on Google/ Bing etc. The results that show-up will be an important factor for him to take a final purchase call. To place your brand here in various SERP Result forms, your Off-Page SEO practices come in handy – Articles, Presentations, Whitepapers, Google Maps, Google My Business, Videos, PR Coverages etc. And, another important factor that helps is your Social Presence. Depending on your product and TG, you need to be present in at least three of the famous Social Media Platforms – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google +, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest etc. Your reviews on Facebook, YouTube, Google Maps, other Affiliate Sites matter a lot and hence your Online Reputation Management helps here. Remarketing Campaigns also play an important role in influencing Customers during Consideration Stage.

Purchase

Third stage is when Customer comes to your website with final decision to purchase your product/ service. Purchase could mean different things for different businesses. For an e-commerce firm, its when the customer purchases a product on the website. For a Real Estate or Education based website, its when a customer fills an Enquiry form for a property or course. For a Content based website, its when a customer spends more than 5-7 mins on the website, as per the industry average for similar kind of site. Conversion Rate of your Landing Pages plays an important part here and we recommend constant A/B Testing to optimize each Landing Page for maximum conversion. Google Analytics plays a crucial role here with its Goal setting option to track if users are doing whats expected of them to do on the website. Google Adwords Conversion Tracking also helps you understand which campaign worked for you and at what level. This data helps you understand your Digital Marketing’s RoI.

Repeat Purchase

The fourth stage is where most of the marketers do not reach or consider due to lack of knowledge, understanding or interest. But, this is extremely important for you to increase your Customer’s Lifetime Value for your Business. E-mail marketing comes to your rescue here. Apart from being a big help in Lead Management and Lead Nurturing before Sales, e-mails are one of the most handy ways to stay connected with your existing customers post sales. It helps you maintain your relationship or bond with the customer and helps your brand stay fresh in his mind always. Only then, will you see a Brand Association and Repeat Visits leading to Repeat Purchases. Other influencer for Repeat Purchase is Social Media Pages and your engagement with the followers.

Advocacy

Once you do all the above four things right with persistence, there is no way that you will loose your Customers. In fact, the Brand Association will then lead to them talking positive about your brand/ product/ service via word of mouth or social media and hence create further awareness for your brand. They will then also share good reviews on your website and other places mentioned in one of the above points. If you can get Video Testimonials from your Customers, there is nothing like that!

So, if your final goal as a Digital Marketer is to get Customers who become your Advocates and your unpaid Brand Ambassador for your product/ service online, you will definitely focus on doing everything right. And, can give yourself a pat on the back once you receive Customer Customer Reviews/ Testimonials/ Mentions.

Happy Digital Marketing! Please share your comments, remarks and feedback on this post. Also, feel free to share this on your Social Network and help us educate others!

Thank you.

Adit Chouhan

Founder – The Clicks Technologies (TCT)
adit.chouhan@clickstechnologies.com