Lifecycle Stages

A lifecycle stage is one position on the ordered ladder a consumer moves along from first contact to advocacy. A stage is reached by holding a state that sits in it, and is the coarse frame those finer states are read against.

What you can do with a lifecycle stage

• tableLifecycle Map · Journeys

Its lifecycle stages— 6

• AwarenessThe stage where a person who does not know the brand comes to know it exists.
• ConsiderationThe stage where a known brand becomes one of the options a person will weigh.
• EvaluationThe stage where the options in hand are compared against each other and narrowed.
• ConversionThe stage where a weighed option becomes a committed one.
• RetentionThe stage after a first commitment, where a relationship is either kept or allowed to lapse.
• AdvocacyThe stage where a kept relationship starts bringing other people in.

Why it matters

What goes wrong without it, as the commitments that license this kind say it, each standing on its sources.

• State and intent are read against one ordered lifecycleA lifecycle vocabulary with no order can only be listed. Nothing says whether one condition is nearer an outcome than another, so it cannot be walked, compared, or drawn in the sequence every reader already has in mind. Order left to the order of entry is worse than absent, because it looks authoritative, cannot be queried, and changes silently the moment an entry is inserted. Naming the ladder once also gives conditions and intentions a common frame: without it, what a consumer is and what the brand wants are two vocabularies that rhyme and never meet.
  SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference · The Goal Question Metric Approach · A Model for Predictive Measurements of Advertising Effectiveness · Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey · The consumer decision journey