{"id":25382,"date":"2022-12-22T17:50:42","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T17:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/22\/managing-b2b-customer-life-cycle-stages-from-acquisition-to-expansion\/"},"modified":"2022-12-22T17:50:42","modified_gmt":"2022-12-22T17:50:42","slug":"managing-b2b-customer-life-cycle-stages-from-acquisition-to-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2022\/12\/22\/managing-b2b-customer-life-cycle-stages-from-acquisition-to-expansion\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing B2B Customer Life Cycle Stages: From Acquisition to Expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/em>Karla Sanders<\/em><\/a>, Engagement Manager at Heinz Marketing<\/em><\/p>\n

A B2B customer\u2019s journey extends beyond the dated marketing funnels for learning about a brand, item, or service. Gone are the days when B2B buyers used a linear approach to sell and market products. With the recent economic uncertainties that battered multiple industries, more and more B2B companies are realizing that retaining and expanding their existing clientele is the most prudent way to move forward.<\/p>\n

Customer retention was historically not given much weight by B2B marketers, but it is now a crucial component of B2B marketing strategies today. Managing the B2B customer life cycle stages with a holistic approach from acquisition to customer expansion offers a better way to maximize the time, money, and effort when creating campaigns and conducting sales outreach. After all, retaining customers is cheaper than acquiring new ones. In fact, customer retention is 5-25 times<\/a> cheaper\u00a0than customer acquisition.<\/p>\n

Customer Life Cycle Stages<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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The series of stages a customer takes when thinking about, choosing, utilizing, and remaining loyal to a product or service is referred to as the customer life cycle.\u00a0 Most B2B marketers know the basic five distinct stages in a customer life cycle: reach, acquisition, conversion, retention, and loyalty. To put it simply, managing the B2B customer life cycle entails attracting a potential customer\u2019s attention, educating them about a company\u2019s offerings, converting them to paying customers, and then keeping them as devoted customers whose contentment with the product or service encourages additional customers to join the cycle. This approach is sometimes represented as a bowtie, as opposed to the traditional linear marketing funnel where engagement ends when an opportunity has been won or a deal has been made.<\/p>\n

The images below illustrate an expanded version of a traditional marketing funnel where customer retention is a crucial part of the CRM strategy to keep the customer moving through the cycle from acquisition to expansion.<\/p>\n

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Acquisition<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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