Mike Templeman: B2B Marketing: Managing the Customer Lifecycle

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What separates the top companies from the average ones in terms of B2B marketing?

There are several factors at play here, but we’ve noticed one play a particularly important role. In this blog we’ll talk about how you can manage your customer lifecycle.

Businesses that sit back and wait for customers aren’t playing the odds. There’s a short period of time when consumers are torn between two or more competitors. If your strategy is to just be patient, you’re going to lose.

The best B2B marketers are the ones that take control of their customer lifecycle. According to a recent Forbes article, this improves the customer experience and increases sales:

“Top marketers make it a point to be the central conduit for customer lifecycle engagement. They see their role as managing the relationship between their company and the customer and consider their function effective at managing the end-to-end customer lifecycle.  The result is that best-in-class marketers have more happier customers.  Average marketers believe sales and support own the customer experience and that marketing has a peripheral role.”

Now, that’s not to say that you need to be overly aggressive. But there’s a fine line between making one final push and offending consumers with your perseverance. Most marketers know when they’re nearing that line.

More often than not, that last push is what decides the outcome. At this point in the customer lifecycle, the consumer has already weighed out the pros and cons of each business. If they get a final pitch from one of the companies that emphasizes all of their pros, then that’s going to be the difference maker.

Managing the customer lifecycle is difficult, but well worth the effort. We recommend B2B marketers to take a proactive stance when it comes to dealing with customers.