Anyone familiar with the concept of Inbound Marketing will certainly know the concept of marketing funnel, or the path taken by a user from the moment he perceives a need until the purchase of a product / service: this “funnel” has represented for years for industry experts the path on which to base their marketing strategies, helping companies to better understand some dynamics to structure the best strategies during the various stages of the process.
THE FLYWHEEL MODEL
In recent years, however, funnel marketing has shown some limitations related to the evolution of the role of customers, who have become increasingly central in the purchasing process, influencing word of mouth and channeling the purchases of other customers.
For this reason, since 2018 Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan has theorized a new model, called Flywheel, able to effectively represent the current marketing context: customers are increasingly informed people, able to make choices aware dictated by reading blogs, insights and feedback from other users, guiding their decision-making process in an increasingly autonomous way – at least in the early stages.
In the Funnel, the energy you spend to acquire each new customer is wasted at the end of the conversion, leaving you at the starting point.
In Flywheel, on the other hand, that energy will feed the process of acquiring new customers, creating a virtuous flow of conversions.
FLYWHEEL: HOW IT WORKS?
As anticipated, the flywheel is a mechanical device capable of storing and returning energy using the force of inertia, based on the speed of rotation. By transposing this representation into your marketing processes, imagine the enthusiasm and satisfaction of your customers as the energy capable of operating the flywheel and generating new users interested in your products, your insights and your communications.
To rate for the model to work at its best, focus your attention on the contact elements most frequently with your audience, such as customer support.
By focusing on how to make your customers happy and satisfied, they are more likely to pass on these feelings to potential new customers. Likewise, the more you increase the speed with which you communicate and satisfy your customers, the faster this model will generate new returns.
If in the Funnel the energy was concentrated more in the Attract phase, in the Flywheel instead the most important element is the Delight phase, in which user satisfaction is what feeds the entire model: therefore the role of the customer becomes essential service.
By focusing on how to make your customers satisfied and happy, they are more likely to pass on these feelings to potential new customers. Likewise, the more you increase the speed with which you communicate and satisfy your customers, the faster this model will generate new returns.
If in the Funnel the energy was concentrated more in the Attract phase, in the Flywheel instead the most important element is the Delight phase, in which user satisfaction is what feeds the entire model: therefore the role of the customer becomes essential service.
For this reason, one of the strengths of this model is the involvement of all your departments in the company’s communication process: in this way the communications between your marketing, sales and customer service departments will be aligned with each other, and they will be equally involved and responsible for the process of acquiring new customers, working together to satisfy customers who, as mentioned above, will generate new returns.
DO I HAVE TO CHANGE MY ENTIRE MARKETING STRATEGY?
If you are wondering if the transition from one model to another will lead to a revolution in your habits, do not worry: the reality is that both help to visualize a process and make operational dynamics more clear and concrete, but the main point is to focus better the efforts of your departments, framing them in a new light and helping you optimize results and improve the efficiency of your work.
What matters will be, first of all, to understand the objectives that we set ourselves with our actions and then to take action to transform theory into practice: in this way you will be ready to achieve new, exciting results!
Contact us at info@playmarketing.ch.
