When you’re working with clients, they’re counting on you: the typical client doesn’t come to you for support because they’ve already got it all figured out. The best content teams know that, but don’t let on that they know (you don’t want to make your client feel like you’re know-it-alls). Instead, the highest-performing teams anticipate needs, generate ideas, and understand not only the task of creating content but also the task of building a strong relationship with their client. That’s where content management teams earn not just attention, but loyalty and lifetime value.
If you want to develop a stronger understanding of how to shape those relationships, you’ll need to understand something called “the client life cycle.” Read on to learn more about how creating a retention content strategy can improve your content marketing success.
Defining the Client Lifecycle
In client lifecycle marketing, there are four key phases: awareness, onboarding, engagement, and advocacy. Let’s define each one so we’re clear on terms. After that, we’ll unpack each one a bit more to better understand how to bring the concept to life.
Here’s how to think about and define the four key phases of the client life cycle:
- Awareness – This one is what it sounds like. The “awareness” phase represents the time period when a potential client becomes aware that they want or need support and begins the process of researching content management support. At this stage, the client lifecycle marketing, the client-to-be is curious, interested, and potentially hesitant or feeling vulnerable. They’re considering bringing someone else (like you) into their project, and that’s a big step.
- Onboarding – Once a client commits to working with you, the onboarding phase begins. It’s at this point where you’re moving from “making a good first impression” during the awareness and courting phase into actually putting your money where your mouth is and showing your client what you can do via content mapping. These will be first impressions of a different kind: it’s not the first time they’re meeting you, but it might be the first time they’re truly working with you. Be sure to put your best self forward as you begin content mapping.
- Engagement – As a content marketing project is underway, it’s on you to ensure you develop strong communication strategies to bolster the engagement phase. This phase is marked by continued momentum on the tasks at hand, combined with continual, recursive check-ins that make your client feel like this work still truly belongs to them. That matters.
- Advocacy – This part of the process is either your victory lap or your walk of shame. If a project has been a success and a good relationship has been built, this phase represents the conclusion of the project and a time to celebrate and enjoy good press as the client tells their friends about you. Alternatively, if things have gone wrong, this is still a chance for connection: you’d want to sit down with the client and discuss where you could have done better.
Don’t think of these steps as formulaic; in reality, they’re organic and they represent the basic progression of a project and the relationships built during completion. It does matter, though, that you understand each phase and can intuit when your client will be feeling the most vulnerable, the most curious, and the most excited (or frustrated) and use that energy to create productive, collaborative synergy.
Content That Speaks to Each Stage
Awareness
This is where discovery begins (for the client and, potentially, for you).
You might be wondering how you can engage a client you haven’t met yet. It’s easier than you think. Take a moment to imagine a potential client. Maybe they’re looking for insurance or thinking about retirement planning. Whatever their needs are, the first questions they’re likely asking themselves will be the same:
- “How do I choose a good advisor?”
- “What do I need to know about this process?”
This is where writing blog posts come in. When you represent what you can offer and who you are via blog posts, you offer a sense of welcome to potential clients and build trust. They get a low-stakes chance to get to know you through your writing, and you’ve got the added benefit of pre-coaching them before they contact you so that your time together can be productive.
Blog posts also give you a chance to persuade new clients to choose you: consider emphasizing your financial value and pricing, your quality (real writers, no robots!), your ability to scale, and whatever else sets you apart.
Onboarding
Okay, they signed up, congrats! Your blog post piqued someone’s interest, and now they’re committed to you as a client. Your next goal should be to limit anxieties and confusion by beginning your collaboration in as organized and supportive a fashion as possible.
Clear organization builds trust and represents your skillset well.
You might start with a warm welcome email about what to expect in your working relationship, covering topics like:
- Who they’ll work with
- How meetings flow
- How they can ask questions
Including one or two FAQs or a short “Get Better Results With This” PDF adds credibility AND reduces friction. Again, you’re making your second “first impression” here. Before they committed as clients, they evaluated you on what you said you could do. Now, they’re evaluating you on how you do it.
Engagement
After clearing the initial hurdles of formalizing your relationship with the client and getting started, it’s all too easy to think you’ve got this in the bag. But this is actually where relationship-building becomes the most important, because this is the stage where you either create synergy and momentum or lose all the trust you’ve built.
It really boils down to communication, keeping your client involved, and ensuring they feel like they’re part of the process. Maybe that will be check-ins, newsletters, milestone celebrations, etc. It could be anything that feels appropriate and meaningful and showcases the successes of your relationship while offering opportunities for feedback.
Engagement can be as elaborate as an event to celebrate a milestone or as simple as sending new blog posts their way. It’s up to you what kind of relationship you want to build and how hands-on or hands-off both you and the client feel comfortable being.
A successful engagement phase continues trust, goodwill, and buy-in…without delivering a sales pitch with every. single. email.
Advocacy
The final stage is where clients tell others about you (and hopefully, there will be good news to tell). You can still be ahead of the game, though, by preparing referral toolkits or shareable materials your client can show others.
A toolkit might include:
- A short email they can forward
- Social media blurbs they can post
- A quick “Welcome” packet template they can share
Ultimately, only the client can decide what they want to share. But you can certainly give them some ideas and be an inspiring collaborator. You know, the kind they want to tell people about.
Automating + Personalizing Without Losing Personality
As you think through all these stages, you might find it sounds like a lot of work! Automation and streamlining your workflow become crucial to ensuring you can do the work and maintain the relationships while not burning out. Here are some strategies for how you can improve your workflow to ensure communications roll out seamlessly:
- Segment your lists: Group clients by service, stage of life, or business format. They shouldn’t all get the same generic email. You want to ensure that the content is tailored and appropriate.
- Trigger-based sequences: Use your CRM to send guides immediately when someone signs up, anniversary messages after one year, webinars when renewals’s due, etc. You can build these triggers into the software.
- Templates with a twist: A standard format email, but with an adjustable line/section specific to the recipient, makes all the difference. (“Congrats on closing your second-year books!”)
Measuring What Matters
When you put this much work into building relationships, you want to ensure that your strategies are working. It’s important to think about where you can find tangible results from all that intangible rapport-building. Here are some places you can look:
- Engagement Metrics: open rates, click-throughs, webinar attendance, feedback, etc.
- Retention: track renewal rates or average client duration
- Referrals: track where new clients are finding you
- Lifetime Value (LTV): when content keeps clients longer (or leads to upsells) it increases revenue.
Put simply: if they’re open and communicative, and they’re staying, and they’re referring, and they’re spending, then your strategies work.
Building With Integrity
Of course, there’s more to relationships than just delivering products and getting feedback. Even with long-term clients, you need to continue putting your best foot forward and ensuring that you’d put as much care into the little things as you do into the exciting stuff like big picture ideas. Don’t forget the following:
- Compliance first: financial or insurance copy must be vetted or reviewed.
- Quality second: clean grammar, polished tone—mistakes erode credibility.
- Authenticity always: make clients feel seen and respected, not manipulated.
- Scalability: make the effort match the resources and future planning available
Paying attention to detail in these ways continues to build trust, and trust builds long relationships. Remember, you’re building a retention content strategy. You want to keep your clients around.
Final Word
When you create your content strategy to match the client life cycle, you create an environment where relationships and collaboration become the core of your work. Your blog posts show the world you know your stuff; your onboarding welcomes others into your process; your engagement strategies model collaboration and celebration to your clients; your advocacy prep work makes it easy for clients to sing your praises.
When you design with these phases in mind and combine them with metrics and thoughtful future planning, you’ll build relationships that last.
