Customers today are exposed to brands and products through an array of channels – for example, websites, online advertising, Twitter, Facebook, brick-and-mortar locations. To stay competitive in such a wide-ranging landscape, companies must have cohesive strategies to find and engage their customers, then keep them engaged over time.

This is what we mean by customer life cycle marketing – engaging customers with consistent, strategic messaging beginning with their first exposure to your product, then continuing through purchase, customer experience and, ultimately, loyalty.

Customer life cycle marketing takes into account the many strategies that can support this goal, including:

Gathering and using data effectively:

• Companies must have sophisticated and robust tools in place for data gathering and analysis. Often, the richest view of customer wants, needs and behaviors comes from bringing data together from different parts of the organization, such as marketing, customer service and social media.
• With the rise of "big data," incredible information can be garnered from company databases. But often companies don't have the skills and resources to take advantage of it. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis is crucial, including "voice of the customer" research, which can reveal important things about customer motivations.
  

Consistent, relevant messaging across the various channels:

• If a customer receives different or conflicting messages from different brand touchpoints, they'll often wind up confused and less likely to engage positively with the brand.
• Publishing relevant, high-quality content that truly engages customers is critical; too often companies hop on the content marketing bandwagon without carefully thinking through their strategy and identifying who within the company is best prepared to truly connect with its customers.
  

Fostering an internal culture of collaboration:

• A genuine collaboration culture require support, even a mandate, from management. Employees should be encouraged to share stories about customer interactions, get their questions answered by their colleagues, and be rewarded for sharing information.
• Increasingly, companies are relying on social collaboration tools such as Jabber, Jive, or Yammer with the ultimate goal of best serving the customer.