Flywheel marketing: How to improve your inbound strategy?

Understanding Flywheel Marketing

Definition of the Flywheel Method

What is the Flywheel?

The Flywheel, or "flywheel" in English, is a marketing method that reimagines the customer journey as a continuous cycle rather than a linear process. The goal is to create perpetual motion that generates growth by capitalizing on existing energy.

The Flywheel places customers at the heart of all interactions, from attraction to retention through conversion. It relies on aligning marketing, sales, and customer service teams to create an optimal experience and differentiate from competitors.

Designed as a virtuous cycle, the Flywheel is self-sustaining: each satisfied customer becomes a true brand ambassador, attracting new prospects through word-of-mouth and contributing to accelerating the wheel's rotation.

Where Does the Flywheel Come From?

While the Flywheel concept is recent in marketing, its roots go back several decades. The precursor to the Flywheel method was Shewhart, who introduced the Deming wheel, a quality management tool. However, it was Deming who popularized this approach in the 1950s. The Flywheel concept as we know it today was introduced by Jim Collins. He compared a company's strategy to a flywheel that, once launched, generates its own energy. Today, the Flywheel is widely used in marketing, notably by companies like HubSpot and Amazon.

Comparison: Flywheel vs Funnel Marketing

Funnel marketing and Flywheel marketing are two approaches that aim to optimize the customer journey. However, their guiding principles and approaches to customers differ significantly.

In the funnel model, customers are seen as the end result of a linear series of steps: awareness, consideration, decision, and action. This model primarily focuses on acquiring new customers, and once a customer is acquired, the process starts over with a new prospect.

In contrast, the Flywheel sees customers as the company's primary engine. Instead of a linear journey, customers are at the center of an ever-turning wheel: attracting new customers, engaging these customers, and finally delighting them so they become brand ambassadors. This perpetual motion cycle enables sustainable growth and greater customer retention.

Let's compare these two models:

Funnel:

• Linear model

• Focuses on acquiring new customers

• Customer is the end of the process

Flywheel:

• Circular model

• Emphasizes customer retention

• Customer is the process driver

It's essential to choose the model best suited to your marketing strategy based on your objectives and target audience.

The Flywheel and Inbound Marketing

The Inbound Cycle: A Complementary Flywheel Model

The inbound approach in the Flywheel is based on a customer-centric philosophy. In this model, customers become the driver of the business process, generating energy to fuel the wheel.

The Flywheel's inbound cycle consists of three main phases:

• Attract: Attracting prospects through quality content creation that meets their needs and expectations

• Engage: Once prospects are attracted, inbound marketing implements actions to convert them into customers. This can involve providing optimal user experience on the website or offering personalized offers

• Delight: Finally, the delight stage involves satisfying customers so they become brand ambassadors, helping attract new prospects

These phases aren't linear but cyclical, with each phase feeding the next in a continuous loop. This allows companies to maintain constant growth, as each satisfied customer generates new business opportunities.

Inbound marketing, with its focus on customer experience, is perfectly aligned with the Flywheel model.

Inbound Techniques to Optimize the Flywheel

To optimize the Flywheel using inbound techniques, you need to focus your efforts on the three main phases with the right levers:

• Attraction: Attract prospects to your business by offering quality, relevant, and useful content. Use SEO, content marketing, social media, and other digital marketing tools to increase visibility and attract qualified audiences

• Engagement: Once you've attracted prospects, you must convert them into customers. Use techniques like lead nurturing and marketing automation to guide prospects throughout the purchase journey

• Satisfaction and Referral: The goal is to retain customers and transform them into brand ambassadors. To do this, it's crucial to maintain long-term, trusting relationships with customers. Rely on referral marketing for this phase

By aligning these different phases, you can create perpetual motion that generates growth by capitalizing on existing energy.

How to Implement a Flywheel Marketing Strategy

The 6 Key Steps to Create an Effective Flywheel Strategy

To implement an effective Flywheel dynamic, follow these 6 key steps:

Step 1 - Market Analysis

Market analysis is the first step in building an effective Flywheel marketing strategy. This phase identifies internal and external factors influencing your sector. You must understand your target audience, identify competitors, follow market trends, and identify growth opportunities.

Start by defining your target audience. What are their needs, behaviors, preferences? This understanding will help you create relevant and attractive content that meets their needs. Buyer personas or "jobs to be done" methodologies can help here.

Next, examine the competitive landscape. Who are your competitors? What strategies do they use? What are their strengths and weaknesses? This knowledge will help you position yourself uniquely in the market. Don't hesitate to create a positioning map!

Step 2 - Objective Definition

Defining objectives is a crucial step in implementing your Flywheel marketing strategy. This allows you to know where you want to go and chart the path to get there. In this context, it's recommended to formulate SMART objectives: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound.

Your objectives should be broken down for each flywheel phase:

• Acquisition: For example, the number of new visitors and leads generated by your site

• Engagement: The number of leads you want to convert into customers, for example

• Satisfaction: For example, the number of customer recommendations you want to obtain

Step 3 - Sales and Marketing Team Alignment

Sales and marketing team alignment is an essential pillar for an effective Flywheel strategy. This harmonization optimizes synergy between services and guarantees consistent customer experience.

To achieve this alignment, several elements can be implemented:

• Define common performance indicators: This provides a global view of performance and facilitates decision-making. The OKR method can be very useful here!

• Create and develop a Sales Playbook: This document gathers all relevant information for sales teams, maintaining consistency in messaging and actions

• Schedule periodic meetings: These regular meetings align Marketing and Sales objectives, discuss performance, and resolve friction points

• Adopt the right tools for a powerful Smarketing stack: Appropriate tools can facilitate collaboration and communication between teams, improving their effectiveness

It's essential to maintain fluid and transparent communication between these two teams to guarantee optimal alignment.

Step 4 - Content Creation

Content creation is a crucial stage in implementing your Flywheel marketing strategy. This is where you'll produce quality, relevant content to attract, engage, and retain customers.

To create effective content:

• Identify your target audience's needs and interests. What types of content will attract and engage them?

• Define the content formats you'll use: blog articles, e-books, infographics, videos, webinars, etc.

• Create an editorial calendar to plan content creation and publication

• Use SEO tools to increase your content's visibility on search engines

• Ensure your content is customer-focused. It should provide value and help customers solve problems or answer questions

Don't forget that content creation is a dynamic process. It's important to regularly measure your content's effectiveness and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Step 5 - Continuous Customer Experience Improvement

At this stage, the objective is to continuously perfect customer experience. To do this, use data collected from customer interactions to identify potential friction points and improve them. Continuous improvement is a Flywheel marketing pillar and must be integrated into your global strategy.

• Regularly analyze customer feedback to discover where friction exists

• Use data analysis tools to understand customer behavior and identify areas needing improvement

• Implement regular feedback systems so customers can share their experiences

• Don't hesitate to test different approaches and adjust your strategy based on results

This step's objective is making customer experience as smooth and pleasant as possible, increasing retention and encouraging positive word-of-mouth.

Step 6 - Implementing a Measurement System (KPIs)

Implementing a measurement system or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is crucial for managing your Flywheel Marketing strategy. It allows measuring your actions' performance and identifying optimization levers.

Start by defining specific KPIs for each Flywheel phase:

• Attraction: number of visits, click-through rates, social media traffic, etc.

• Engagement: conversion rates, number of qualified leads, email open rates, etc.

• Satisfaction and Referral: retention rates, Net Promoter Score, referral rates, etc.

Ensure your KPIs are simple, precise, measurable, and associated with a SMART objective. Additionally, it's crucial to monitor them regularly to adjust your strategy in real-time. Finally, don't forget to analyze obtained results to understand trends and evolve your actions accordingly.

Each step is essential for ensuring your Flywheel strategy's success.

The Central Role of Content in the Flywheel

In the Flywheel context, content plays a decisive role at each cycle stage:

• During the attraction phase, quality, relevant content attracts prospects to your business. This is where content marketing and SEO come into play, helping increase visibility and attract qualified audiences

• During the engagement phase, content helps convert prospects into customers. Techniques like lead nurturing, which relies on providing personalized, relevant content for each prospect, are essential

• Finally, during the satisfaction and referral phase, content continues playing a key role in helping retain customers. Useful, engaging content encourages customers to share positive experiences, becoming true brand ambassadors

It's crucial to dedicate time and resources to creating quality content at each Flywheel cycle stage. Use customer feedback to refine your content and ensure it remains relevant and attractive.