Customer Life Cycle – What is it?

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In order for a business to be profitable, effective management and strategic planning are necessary. One of the stages of establishing business processes is attracting a client and turning him from a casual buyer into a regular one. This entire path in marketing is called the "customer life cycle".


At the same time, in order to attract a buyer, you need to invest money once (as a rule), and then spend money on maintaining customer loyalty from time to time, but these are much smaller amounts. It is the share of regular customers that usually accounts for the largest amount of profit for the company. Therefore, properly merchant cash advance email marketing planned work with them is the basis of any successful business project.


The customer life cycle is the process by which a consumer becomes a regular customer of a company. It can be divided into five stages: acquisition, interest, evaluation, purchase, loyalty.

The life cycle can be complete and last for quite a long time (for example, the entire time the company exists) or be partial (for example, ending after the first or any other stage).

Managers must plan the customer life cycle in such a way that at each of the listed stages the needs of buyers are satisfied and there is a desire to move on to the next stage. The effectiveness of the specialist's work is assessed by the number of clients who return to make a purchase again.

Customer Life Cycle – What is it?

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The usual business model is focused on attracting a large number of customers and increasing sales through one-time purchases. But the CLM model focuses on completing all stages of the consumer's life cycle, turning them into a regular customer who will return for purchases over many years. That is, the point is not in the number of customers, but in their quality and stability of demand.

When planning an advertising and marketing budget, it is important to understand how the customer life cycle proceeds. Knowing how to influence consumers of different age and social groups, you can optimize the costs of attracting new customers and increasing the loyalty of existing ones.


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Customer Life Cycle Stages
The life cycle begins when a person buys something from the company. Then employees must plan all work with the buyer in such a way that he wants to come back for new goods or services again, and then again, and so on ad infinitum. That is, the consumer must show loyalty to the company. This can be achieved by carefully analyzing the needs of different people and offering them what they want. Work with clients must be targeted and personalized.

A competent marketer pays great attention to the customer life cycle, because by understanding what stage the consumer is at, the specialist can understand several important points:

which of the clients are the most solvent (they are the ones who have the greatest impact on the company’s final profit);

how sales are going, where there are shortcomings (based on the analysis of data, it is necessary to organize work to eliminate them);

if the client is already a regular one, there is no need to attract him with additional advertising, which costs a lot;

in which direction to move in order to avoid mistakes and prevent a decrease in sales volume.