With Royal baby fever sweeping across the globe, it comes as no surprise that some of us are thinking a little more about the Royal family.
The phrase Content is King has been thrown about since 2011, but with 2013 well under-way it’s time to ask, is there a new heir to the digital throne? In answer, I’d like to nominate a young King called Lifecycle Marketing.
A new member of the marketing Royal family, Lifecycle Marketing can:
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deliver an experience that will keep customers coming back for more
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create customers that can’t stop talking both on and offline
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improve campaign performance
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see a 100% year-on-year increase in email marketing revenues
So whilst Lifecycle Marketing doesn’t have blond hair, hazel eyes and a Eton education, it’s brave, noble, intelligent and insightful, thoughtful and perhaps a little dashing: it embodies everything you could want in a King.
BRAVE
A brave new concept that is slowly being nurtured by marketers, it represents the birth of a new era. A drastic shift in marketing, one that focuses on more than attracting a customer, but on converting them into your own personal brand advocate.
Rather than running straight into battle sword drawn, Lifecycle Marketing is at camp, surrounded by experts and creating a strategy. When it does venture into battle it’ll be fighting with pillows, blankets, bandages and cups of tea – well, not exactly.
See, the brave thing about Lifecycle Marketing is that it requires thought, research, a hands-on approach, a finger on the pulse and staff that are as excited about a product or service as you are. It isn’t easy, but the rewards much outweigh the time and thought it takes to implement such an approach.
NOBLE
Our new King goes a step further than the Content King of old; it embraces the entire customer experience process, not just the sale. Lifecycle Marketing relies on rich customer experiences that transform clients into our best advertising tools.
Customer experience is the sum of all the experiences a customer has with a business. From initial awareness, through to discovery, attraction, interaction and purchase, to use and development, and finally ending in advocacy. So whilst they may not be shouting from the rooftops, a tweet and a positive review on your Facebook page will certainly go a long away in generating leads and attracting new customers.
With a recent survey by Dimensional Research stating that 90% of respondents were influenced by online reviews during the purchasing process, it’s easy to see the potential that lies in transforming one-off clients into brand advocates.
INTELLIGENT AND INSIGHTFUL
This isn’t all about concepts though, this is about tangible results, and the use of technology to support the business / consumer cycle.
Lifecycle Marketing uses lead nurturing pathways and marketing automation technology such as HubSpot to feed tailored content to prospects and engage with them before they buy, when they buy and after they’ve completed the buying process.
These technical resources provide a platform for tracking and analysing customer engagement, including detailed information about what content leads have read, and when. With this technology, it’s easy to strike up the sort of conversation that your customer wants to be a part of and with nurtured leads making 47% larger purchases, it’s clear to see that marketing automation technology will give any campaign edge.
THOUGHTFUL
Lifecycle Marketing is a truly thoughtful approach, it considers not only the customer experience, but also the employee experience. It relies on a degree of internal marketing that engages employees and motivates them to deliver the best possible customer experience.
There are a number of ways to get employees on board, but research has shown that internal communications is one of the most rewarding.
DASHING
With an approach that relies on connections and forging lasting relationships based on a foundation of trust and great customer experience, you can’t help but think that the new ruler of the digital throne is certainly a little dashing.
LONG LIVE THE KING
The Content Marketing love story hasn’t really ended, actually, creating high quality content is more important than ever, with 66% of marketers viewing content marketing as very important to their overall strategy.
All that’s really happened is that the idea around Content Marketing has grown, Lifecycle Marketing is the mature King that has listened, who has learnt and has embraced the customer as the heart of the marketing process. So whilst content is still the foundation of any strong marketing campaign, it is Lifecycle Marketing that turns clients into family, and that is where they belong.
For a more detailed look at what Lifecycle Marketing is and how to apply it, read the ‘What is Lifecycle Marketing?’ eGuide.
