Understanding your leads and where they are in the buyer’s journey is crucial to creating effective marketing strategies. Two common ways to track leads are through lifecycle stages and lead stages. While these two terms may seem interchangeable, they serve different purposes in your marketing efforts.
In this blog post, we’ll explore the differences between lifecycle stages and lead stages, how they work together, and why it’s important to have a clear understanding of both for successful lead management.
Stages of the life cycle
In the marketing and sales process, the lifecycle stage refers to the different stages a lead goes through on their journey to becoming a customer. Some phone number list companies designate unique lifecycle stages based on the nature of their business, but HubSpot defines the different lifecycle stages as follows:
The first stage of the lead lifecycle, “Subscriber,” refers to someone who has subscribed to one of your channels to receive regular updates about your company. This could be an email newsletter subscriber, a blog subscriber, or even a social media follower.
Leads are contacts who have been determined to usa lists be potential customers. As you can see in the image above, there are several stages of the lead lifecycle: standard leads, marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), and sales-qualified leads (SQLs). Some brands choose to simply use statuses like “lead” and “qualified lead.”
These designations are different from lead statuses; we’ll discuss them later.
Opportunities represent high-quality leads who are ready to buy, while customers represent contacts who have already made a purchase.
Why are life cycle stages important?
The goal of assigning a lifecycle stage to each lead is to help marketers understand where each prospect is in the buying process and tailor refine your vision: precision photo retouching their marketing initiatives accordingly. By tracking leads through their lifecycle stages, marketers can more effectively nurture them with targeted messages and content that meet their specific needs and interests at each stage of the journey.
For example, a lead is only a lead if they have interacted with the company and fit its profile. They don’t become marketing-qualified customers until they indicate at least some interest in what the company has to offer based on your marketing efforts.
