How to stand out online in 2025

Marketing is a minefield.

We’re battling competitors, viral moments, questionable trends and the rise of AI. Our attention spans are shrinking (thanks TikTok!) and each and every platform is getting more and more populated with content.

It’s hard to know what to prioritise, when and where.

But how often do you think about things from your customers POV?

If we’re seeing how hard it is to be noticed online, how do you think they feel? Their feeds are becoming saturated with people like us battling for views and algorithms constantly changing what content they see.

So how do you stand out online in 2025?

It’s time to take a step back and think about your Customer Life-Cycle. This is one of my favourite topics to discuss with my Multi-Channel Marketer & Content Creator learners at Blue Lion Training Academy. All it takes is looking at things from a different perspective…

The Customer Life-Cycle (aka The Customer Journey) is a framework that helps us marketers break down our audience into key groups. Let’s work backwards and run through each section:

Engage

This is the end of the cycle, where your current customers sit. This area can often be overlooked, as a lot of businesses constantly strive for new customers, and forget to nurture their loyal ones. This is where personalised email marketing and engaging social media content comes in (think news updates, team led content, behind the scenes etc). You need to give people a reason to stay, and to help them feel valued.

Convert

This is where website content needs to be optimised, tactical emails can be sent, and marketing methods can be used in harmony with sales strategies to retain new customers. More than ‘just’ social media comes into play here – although socials are still an essential tool to help get clients over the line! Sales and marketing need to work in harmony (not in competition!) to help ensure customers trust your brand enough to take action, and feel their pain points have been answered.

Act

This is where 80% of businesses and marketing teams sit. The easiest way to create content is to talk to customers as if they are ready to act. Buy now! Sign up now! Call us today!

We want them to take some kind of action, so that the sales or marketing team can follow up and get that sale over the line (or into the convert stage). It’s the easiest way to think about marketing, right? Here’s what we offer, and how we can help you. We should be aiming for higher engagement rates and interactions during the part of the lifecycle.

Reach

This is the most overlooked part of the cycle. We spend most of our time in Act & Convert – ready to make those sales and gain new customers. But what about all the potential customers who don’t know anything about you yet? What about those customers who don’t know you can help solve their pain points?

During this part of the cycle, your customers have their own light bulb moments. Your content at this stage needs to be ready to nurture their journey, and start building that trust.

For example, before deciding to buy a new car, a customer goes through their own thought process. There’s frustration that their car is playing up… again! There’s concerns about the financial side of things. They’re overwhelmed with how many different cars are available. There’s three pain points that could be turned into marketing content bringing peace of mind to the customer and building trust before any sales pitches are made:

• A blog titled “10 signs it’s time to say goodbye to your current car…”
• An email that breaks down pricing plan options, focussing on why it’s better to buy new rather than keep trying to fix an old car
• A UGC social media campaign with different cars being test driven, helping to explain their individual benefits

Riding the cycle

It is a fine art to be able to seamlessly blend the different stages of the customer lifecycle into your marketing content. Creating a version of the lifecycle from a business and a customer perspective as a first step can help you re-strategise and ensure your sales and marketing process isn’t missing any gaps.

Then the next time you start writing content, whether it be for online platforms or offline projects, you can then use the cycle to sit back and think – who are we really targeting here?

Use this as an extension of your target audience to help you understand exactly what motives each section of the journey, and how this then impacts your content.