Companies spend thousands of dollars generating leads. However, 79% of those leads never convert into sales, and usually, a lack of nurturing is to blame. Given the time and budget spent on acquiring those contacts in the first place, not investing in ongoing lead nurturing is counterproductive to meeting your sales and marketing goals. What's the point of generating leads if they're going to sit there?
That's why companies invest in lifecycle marketing, a practice that helps you get the most out of every lead. A robust lifecycle marketing strategy will help you attract, sell, and delight your contacts, leading to increased customer loyalty and retention. And when it comes to deploying incredibly effective lifecycle marketing strategies, there isn't a better tool out there to use than HubSpot.
5 Essential Lifecycle Marketing Features of HubSpot
In the film, Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin's brash character introduces an acronym to his sales team: ABC, or always be closing. This mindset is typical for sales teams, who often base performance on how many deals you can close. However, in an environment where only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales, the mindset of "always be closing" isn't always realistic. You can't "always be closing" when your customers aren't qualified or aren't ready to buy.
Additionally, after you convert a lead and they become a customer, it doesn't guarantee they will remain one. On average, businesses lose around 10 to 25 percent of their customers every year. And despite bringing in new leads to replace lost customers, acquiring those new customers can cost 5 to 25 times more than keeping your existing ones. As a result, if you're looking to grow and scale, your customer retention needs to be as important as your lead generation. Otherwise, you're working to acquire leads, instead of working to keep customers.
That's why the practice of lifecycle marketing is so essential. With an excellent lifecycle marketing strategy, you can attract, acquire, and delight more qualified customers, helping you crush your sales and marketing goals. However, without the right tools in your marketing stack, the type of continuous engagement and personalization necessary to execute an effective lifecycle marketing strategy can be tricky.
This is where HubSpot comes in. HubSpot is the best choice for conducting lifecycle marketing efforts because it integrates your marketing and sales efforts. You have every feature you need to connect with your leads at every stage, and you can completely master your lifecycle marketing efforts.
Here are the most compelling lifecycle marketing features HubSpot has to offer.
Feature #1: Organize Leads By Stage
A proper lifecycle marketing strategy will help you connect with leads from the very start of their engagement with you. To effectively do that, you need to understand which stage all of your leads are in, and set the proper lifecycle stage for each. This way, you can separate subscribers from the MQLs, the MQLs from the SQLs, and create segments to conduct lifecycle specific marketing initiatives.
To update lifecycle stage, you'll need to use the HubSpot CRM. The HubSpot CRM is one central repository within HubSpot that holds all of your contacts. Each contact will get a unique profile that includes their lifecycle stage, as well as their name, phone number, website, lead status, and more. Sales and marketing both have access to this contact database, which will also include a history of lead behavior, such as the offers or email workflows they're engaging on.
You can also use HubSpot to automatically update lifecycle status, cutting down on manual data entry. When a contact takes a specific action, such as filling out a form to sign up for a free trial, you can set up HubSpot to recognize and update that individual as a SQL. After that, the lifecycle status of your leads will automatically change based on that criteria.
For teams looking to target leads with more relevant content, the ability to organize and manage your contacts in the HubSpot CRM is one of the platform's most beneficial features.
Feature #2. Create Persona-Specific Collateral
Even if your leads are all in the same lifecycle stage, doesn't mean they have the same wants, needs, and desires. It only indicates how ready they are to buy. Using HubSpot, we can use our buyer personas to segment our leads even further. You can upload each of your buyer personas into the platform, and assign a persona to each of your actual contacts. By uploading and assigning the persona, you can group leads by lifecycle stage and persona.
From there, you can create email workflows, landing pages, and blog posts to target specific personas at every lifecycle stage. As a result, you get more specific with your language for collateral, hitting every persona with the message that addresses their wants, needs, desires, and challenges at the right time. Additionally, any marketing or sales rep can go into the HubSpot CRM and obtain context about any lead in your database.
With HubSpot, your buyer personas won't sit and gather dust. You will use the personas and buyer journey to kick your lifecycle marketing into high gear.
Feature #3. Use Effective Calls-To-Action
Throughout the buyer journey, leads are only going to convert on offers they need. Thanks to HubSpot, you always present them with that offer. With HubSpot, you can create a smart call-to-action (CTA) based on lifecycle stage. This feature makes it so that when a lead lands on a page, the CTA for that page will switch out based on the lead's buyer journey stage. At the beginning of their engagement, for instance, the CTA could direct to an informative ebook or worksheet. Then, if that individual is progressing towards becoming a customer, the CTA could guide them to a conversation with sales or a free trial.
With the smart CTA, you will ensure you're always presenting leads with the most substantial offer, at the most opportune time. Using form submission information, such as job title, location or company, you can use tokens to personalize your CTAs even more, which can improve your conversions by nearly 42%.
Feature #4. Personalize Website and Marketing Messaging
It's challenging to write for everyone. It's nearly impossible to write copy that addresses each one of your buyer personas, with the exact message they need to hear at every stage of the buyer's journey. That's why HubSpot created smart content. With this content module, you can switch out the message on your homepage, landing page, or email based on lifecycle stage.
You can set up smart content to present a TOFU lead with an introductory message or to welcome back a repeat visitor. This way, you can ensure that addressing each person's unique challenges.
Feature #5. Track Your Entire Marketing and Sales Funnel
To orchestrate an effective lifecycle marketing strategy, you need to create a consistent marketing and sales funnel. Maintaining this consistency requires the complete alignment of your sales and marketing team. Your sales and marketing teams need to agree on the definition of each lifecycle stage, as well as what makes someone a good fit. Otherwise, you'll lose clarity on which contacts are moving forward and are motivated to buy.
From there, you can track each lifecycle stage and where leads are in your funnel. You can even go further using lead scoring, another HubSpot capability. With lead scoring, you'll assign contacts with a numerical score based on various attributes, such as their industry, annual revenue, or amount of engagement with your website. The ability to score your leads helps you get even more granular about what makes a good fit.
HubSpot's predictive lead scoring can also help forecast which leads will eventually become customers, based on previous the behavior patterns of leads and their characteristics. Achieving this alignment will ensure that both marketing and sales have the context they need to do their jobs while working in complete unison.
Getting Results With HubSpot
When you utilize it effectively, HubSpot can be an excellent resource for conducting lifecycle marketing. Customers use HubSpot's marketing, sales, and client success capabilities every day to crush their goals. However, even with a tool like HubSpot, it can be challenging to put together an overall marketing strategy that delivers results. And if you're experiencing poor performance, it may seem impossible to get back on track with your objectives and put HubSpot to use.
If you're consistently missing your sales and marketing goals, you may need to put your lifecycle marketing on hold and develop an entirely new game plan. The success of your marketing and sales team depends on a strong strategic foundation. With our Game Plan offer, we meet with companies that need to stimulate growth and offer a fresh perspective.
