Marketing Attribution 
Recently, when we talk to some of our clients, they often ask these questions:
“Aren’t the customer journey and life cycle referring to the same things?”
“When do we need customer lifecycle vs customer journey?”
“Can we apply stages in the customer journey to our customer lifecycle?
“Which approach is better for my businesses, looking into customer journey or their lifecycle?”
That’s when we realized many businesses are still confused with customer lifecycle and customer journey. But actually, it’s normal as these two have something in common about customer experience, making it easy to blur their distinctions. For instance, terms like “touchpoints,” “stages,” and “journey” can apply to both, but they describe different aspects.
So if you also find yourself struggling to differentiate them, keep reading and we’ll give you a clear explanation.
Understanding customer lifecycle
First, we’ll take a deep dive into what customer lifecycle means to be and why your business needs it.
What is customer lifecycle?
The customer lifecycle is very much like the lifecycle of a relationship. It’s about the entire journey of a customer’s relationship with a business, from the first interaction to the point where they no longer engage with the brand.
Let us be specific with an example:
- Awareness: A potential customer discovers your brand through a social media ad and visits your website.
- Engagement and purchase: They explore your offerings, sign up for your newsletter, and make their first purchase using a welcome discount.
- Retention: You follow up with personalized recommendations and an exclusive rewards program to keep them engaged.
- Loyalty: They become a loyal customer, leave positive reviews, and recommend your brand to others.
- Re-engagement: If their activity declines, you re-engage them with a tailored promotion or relevant updates, successfully bringing them back.
It’s important to note that the customer lifecycle can vary depending on the nature and type of business. The specific stages and strategies might differ, but the core goal remains the same: building lasting relationships with customers.
Why does your business need a customer lifecycle?
Customer lifecycle is built from a business perspective to attract, retain, and maximize the value of each customer. It helps you understand and optimize the stages customers go through to ensure long-term engagement and profitability.
Many startups and SMEs think lifecycles are only for large businesses with established customer bases. However, starting small with a lightweight lifecycle (e.g., focusing on awareness, purchase, and basic retention) shows that you’re setting the foundation for sustainable growth.
So even if your business is newly launched, you still need a customer lifecycle. Think of it as a blueprint that evolves alongside your business, starting small doesn’t mean thinking small.
Understanding customer journey
Now we’ll discuss the customer journey to see how it’s different from customer lifecycle.
What is customer journey?
Unlike customer lifecycle, customer journey doesn’t consider long-term outcomes like loyalty, advocacy, or retention. It tracks the touchpoints or steps of your customers on their way to fulfill immediate needs, such as finding, evaluating, and purchasing a product.
In the modern landscape, customer journeys in eCommerce have become more and more complex with multiple stages. But here are 4 stages that your customers often go through:
For instance, consider a general customer journey:
- Awareness: A customer realizes they have a problem to solve or a need to fulfill and begins researching potential solutions.
- Research: They discover your brand through an online ad or social media and explore your website to gather more information about your offerings.
- Evaluation & Purchase: After considering their options, they respond to a promotional offer or discount and complete their purchase.
Why does your business need customer journey?
As you can see, you need to have a customer journey in place before focusing on the customer lifecycle because the journey is the foundation upon which the lifecycle is built. Suppose you don’t optimize this journey first. In that case, customers may fail to achieve their goal, leaving your business without the opportunity to move them into the lifecycle stages like retention or advocacy.
That’s why you should view the customer journey as a series of opportunities for your business to guide customers toward conversion and help them achieve their goals.
We had a chance to collaborate with Mega Digital and see how they make the most of the detailed customer journey in NestAds. They used it to really dig into how their ads were performing and discovered which ad channels were driving the most conversions.
With the detailed customer journey for each order, they figured out exactly where their customers were engaging and which ads worked best to move them closer to making a purchase. And what comes will come, Mega saw a 2.5x ROAS and a 25% decreased CPA after just 1 month of implementation.
What is the difference between customer lifecycle vs customer journey?
Customer lifecycle is the big picture of a customer’s relationship with a business, from initial awareness to loyalty. Customer journey, on the other hand, is the specific path a customer takes within each stage of the lifecycle, including their interactions and experiences.
We believe if you understand customer lifecycle and customer journey right, you definitely see the difference. So in this part, we will look closer into some detailed aspects of them.
| Aspect | Customer Lifecycle | Customer Journey |
| Timeframe | Long-term, strategic view of the entire customer relationship. | More immediate, focused view of specific interactions and experiences. |
| Perspective | Business-centric, focusing on the stages a customer goes through from acquisition to retention. | Customer-centric, focusing on the customer’s perspective and emotions at each touchpoint. |
| Goal | Optimize the overall customer experience to increase customer lifetime value (CLTV). | Improve specific touchpoints to enhance customer satisfaction and drive conversions. |
| Metrics | CLTV, customer acquisition cost (CAC), churn rate, and repeat purchase rate. | Conversion rates, bounce rates, time on site, and customer satisfaction. |
| Tracking tools | CRM software, marketing automation platforms, and analytics tools. | Website analytics, ad tracking software, attribution tools, and user surveys. |
Customer lifecycle vs customer journey: Which approach should you take?
If you want your business to grow sustainably and drive long-term success, customer journey vs customer lifecycle should be complementary, not mutually exclusive. So, it’s not “OR”, it’s “AND”, here’s why:
- Without customer journey: You won’t know how to guide customers effectively through their buying process. The lifecycle starts on an unstable foundation, as early interactions may not meet customer expectations.
- Without customer lifecycle: You risk viewing customer interactions as one-time transactions rather than opportunities to build lasting relationships. Valuable data from the journey isn’t leveraged to retain or upsell customers, limiting your business growth.
The journey identifies how to meet the customer’s needs at specific moments, while the lifecycle makes sure these interactions build trust, loyalty, and value over time. Separating these two, you’ll probably miss the opportunity to align short-term and long-term strategies.
As we mentioned, defining the customer journey is a must to understand customer behavior, preferences, and pain points. And this forms the foundation for crafting a meaningful lifecycle strategy.
Let’s say you don’t know how customers navigate your site, how will you address their barriers to conversion? Just when your journey is optimized and customers achieve their immediate goals, the customer lifecycle will come into play to nurture the relationship further.
How to track customer journeys and develop strategies for the lifecycle?
In this part, we’ll come into practice, let’s begin by tracking your customer journey.
Track buyer journey
1. Identify key touchpoints
Pinpoint the critical interactions a customer has with your brand, such as website visits, email opens, social media engagements, and purchases.
2. Collect data
You can use tools to track how customers move through their journey, for example:
- Google analytics: Understand traffic sources and user flow.
- Heatmaps: Tools like Hotjar to see how users interact with your site.
- Surveys & feedback forms: Ask customers about their experience.
Accurate and sufficient customer data are required in this stage.
3. Map out customer journey
Visualize the steps and touchpoints to understand the full picture.
If you want to save time for every step, we suggest using software with a customer journey feature to take over all these things for you. You can refer to the customer journey in NestAds, here’s a quick guide to get started:
Now you have your customer journeys, it’s time to find out how to retain your customers.
Build lifecycle for customer retention
There are 3 factors that influence how customers move through the lifecycle and respond to your retention efforts: disposable income, personal preferences, and attention span.
1. Disposable income
How much a customer can spend and how often they’ll return may depend on disposable income. Customers with higher disposable incomes may move through the lifecycle faster, upgrading to premium products or becoming loyal sooner.
*Strategy: You can segment customers based on spending capacity and create tiered retention strategies.
Example: Offer exclusive deals or memberships for high-spending customers while promoting budget-friendly bundles for cost-conscious shoppers.
2. Personal preferences
This shapes what customers buy, how often they engage, and whether they advocate for the brand. Preferences are dynamic and can change based on trends or life events.
Strategy: Personalize communications and your offerings.
Example: Use data from previous purchases to recommend similar products or introduce new ones that align with customer preferences.
3. Attention span
Short attention spans mean brands have limited time to capture interest and deliver value at each stage. If touchpoints are not engaging, customers may churn.
Strategy: Businesses need to create concise, impactful messages and easy-to-navigate experiences.
Example: Use quick-loading pages, bite-sized email content, and clear calls-to-action to maintain engagement.
Final thoughts
Together, customer lifecycle vs customer journey helps your business meet immediate customer needs and foster lasting relationships. Thus, by tracking the journey first to understand behavior and then building the lifecycle to nurture relationships, you can create a cohesive, customer-centric strategy that drives both short-term conversions and long-term loyalty.
