Key takeaways
- Lifecycle marketing covers customers after the sale, not only prospects before it.
- Each stage gets its own goal and its own message.
- What a person does, not a calendar, should move them to the next stage.
What are the stages of lifecycle marketing
The stages of lifecycle marketing follow a person from stranger to advocate, with a different goal at each step. Names vary, but a B2B lifecycle usually looks like this.
- Awareness: help the right people discover you exist.
- Consideration: give interested buyers what they need to compare options.
- Onboarding: help new customers get set up and reach their first result.
- Adoption: encourage wider and deeper use across the customer's team.
- Renewal and expansion: show value before the contract comes up.
- Advocacy: make it easy for happy customers to refer or review you.
How is lifecycle marketing different from a sales funnel
Lifecycle marketing continues after the purchase, while a sales funnel ends at it. A funnel asks how to turn interested buyers into customers. Lifecycle marketing also asks how to turn customers into long-term users who renew, buy more and recommend you.
What does lifecycle marketing look like in B2B
In B2B, lifecycle marketing means the messages a company receives change with what it has done, not with the date. Take an invented project management tool. A team that signs up but creates no project gets a short email showing how to set up the first one. A team that invites colleagues gets tips on shared views. An account nearing renewal gets a summary of what its team set up during the year.
Each message has a trigger, a goal and a clear next step, and each one stops once the person has taken that step.
How do you start with lifecycle marketing
You start with lifecycle marketing by mapping your stages, choosing one action that marks each move between them and writing one message for the stage where you lose the most people. Do not try to build every stage at once.
Agree the definitions with sales and customer success, because both talk to the same people. If marketing sends an adoption tip to a customer who has just complained to support, the lifecycle feels automated in the wrong way.
Where Pebbles Ai fits
- CapabilityProspecting & customer recordsThe Pebbles Ai CRM (in Beta) groups contacts into segments, with notes, tasks and activity on each record, so each stage's audience is easy to find.
- CapabilityOutreach contentOutreach content drafts single-touch and multi-touch email campaigns, and a template send to a CRM segment always asks for approval first.
Common questions
Is lifecycle marketing the same as email marketing?
No. Email is a common channel for it, but lifecycle marketing can also use in-product messages, calls from customer success, events and content.
Who owns lifecycle marketing?
Usually a lifecycle or product marketing manager, working with sales and customer success. In small teams, the head of marketing often owns it directly.
What data do you need for lifecycle marketing?
You need to know which stage each person is in and the actions that move them on, such as signing up, inviting a colleague or renewing. Start with the few signals you already trust.
About this page. Written by the Pebbles Ai team for people who run sales, marketing and growth. Last updated .
