Flywheel – A new way of doing marketing and increasing your sales

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Marketing is growing and transforming every day, and if it were not for this evolution the majority of the companies that nowadays do their business thanks to digital marketing would not even exist. Luckily, there is always somebody who is able to see even further, who’s idea will improve substantially the way marketing works and how the sales on the Internet are done. The Flywheel was born as one of these ideas, however, it comes from a well known strategy such as inbound marketing. It is a modern technique that improves the user’s experience and makes its retention easier.

What is the Flywheel?

In order to understand how it works, it is necessary to reconsider the structure of the sales funnel. Everybody knows how the philosophy of inbound marketing works. It is a strategy that has a beginning and an end, which consists of the following:

  • Attract the user
  • Convert them (get some of their data)
  • Incite them to buy
  • Build their loyalty for referral marketing
  • Delight them for future purchases.

However, what happens after that? The process begins again, something that could generate high costs for the company. In fact, the creator of this new strategy who is none other than the CEO of HubSpot, Brian Halligan, assures that attracting a new user costs more money and effort than inverting in the existing one.
And this is when the Flywheel structure enters the game. Instead of having the form of a funnel, it is represented by a circle chart, that shows that once a relationship with a client is established, it is necessary to start building their loyalty to attract them again. This way the process feeds back on itself and makes the already convinced client buy again and again. The structure therefore would be the following:

  • Attract: Consists in making the offers more attractive to a client by using all the information that the company has about him/her.
  • Build Loyalty: At this stage the client gets so delighted with the purchasing experience that he/she shares it with their family and friends in the social media.
  • Delight: Here the process begins again. The Delight and Attraction stages have to be very related.
  • Growth: This stage is in the center of the circle. The more turns the process takes, the more benefit the company will receive.

The difference between the Sales Funnel and the Flywheel.

The differences between the sales funnel and the Flywheel go beyond just the investment cost, so when incorporating it into the company’s marketing strategy, it is important to have in mind what techniques are to be improved or removed in order to achieve better results. Some of the biggest differences between these two are listed below:

Purchasing experience repeats itself

The funnel is designed to be used just one time, it literally works as a normal funnel. A customer passes from one point to the other, forcing the company to work on attracting a larger amount of visitors in order to reach the expectations. However, in the case of the Flywheel, the amount of the users you were able to attract does not matter, since the aim is to repeat the purchasing experience more than once. Thus, you achieve the campaign targets in a faster and more profitable way.

The users already have their history

By using the traditional methods, the company knows little or nothing about the new users, which makes it more difficult to attract them with a customized campaign. However, this new strategy allows you to have a complete record of the users, you know their preferences and other important aspects that could be incredibly useful in the marketing or purchasing process.

The campaigns become more creative.

By having the access to an almost unlimited sales process, the marketing team can focus on making the campaigns more effective and creative, and just focus on delighting, instead of worrying about attracting more visits.

How to give the Flywheel a good use?

Now that we understand how the Flywheel works in theory, it is time to put it into practice. It is not merely about changing the funnel into the circle, it is more about reconsidering all these strategies that you are currently using and make them more effective. In order to achieve it you can do the following:
Customized service: The client should be able to choose how she/he wants the products to be, something that could be also applied when creating a content marketing campaign.
Unlimited customer service: The company should make sure that all the clients can get in touch with them any day of the week at any time. For that purpose you can use chatbots or CRM systems.
Free Samples: The companies that use a traditional way of selling, make sure that the client buys something first, however, with the Flywheel – delighting is more important and for that you can offer free samples or periods of times for trying your services for free.
Finally, since we are talking about a “wheel”, it is important to make sure that there is no friction that could stop it. Namely, performing any kind of action that will make the client stop interacting in the sales process. For example, if the company makes the clients buy the whole package – they apply the friction, something that should be avoided. When applying the Flywheel method you would never force the client, instead – you will maintain fluid communication in order for the user to complete the purchase.

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