For more than a decade now, the marketing funnel has been the most dominant model or representation of the various stages of the buyer’s journey as marketers tried to attract and keep customers with different offerings and campaigns designed to get people ‘into’ a funnel until they are theoretically read to spend money on a service.

It’s no secret that the marketing funnel has also always been dominated by the idea of providing value to customers, and making people want to be part of something – like success, or prosperity, or anything else that is considered important desirous to the niche in question.

But what if we tell you that like all marketing models, the marketing funnel has its limits and its limits are becoming more and more apparent as the model ages? What if we tell you that there is another way to expand the idea of the marketing funnel and this approach will take into consideration the non-linear changes that occur during a buyer’s journey ‘down the funnel?’

The marketing flywheel

It’s not bad to use or have a marketing funnel, but if it is no longer bringing the kind of results that you enjoyed years ago, you may want to consider transitioning to a marketing flywheel. A marketing flywheel is the answer to the declining performance of a marketing model that is already thirty plus years old (you read that correctly).

The flywheel is actually a metaphor taken from one of the more enigmatic icons of the Industrial Revolution.

It’s one of the more efficient ways to store and release energy, and when you’re dealing with any type of marketing effort, you’re dealing with energy of all sorts. It’s just how we position the energy and how release it that matters. And it’s great because now the biggest drive of all kinds of growth is customer delight – happiness, in short.

But how do you apply this method? How do you quantify it and make it applicable to the real world?

Take the idea of customer representatives who get commissions because they close deals. Before, the sale was all that mattered right? How do you figure in the flywheel here?

If customer delight is what’s more important, then customer representatives with the highest retention rates will get the most benefits and rewards. After such a change, representatives will go into high gear in attempting to keep customers on behalf of the business. That’s a huge change – and a necessary one, because again, the biggest driver of growth is happiness.

The next concept to work on is friction. A locomotive or any machine starts off stronger and faster with less friction right? But what causes friction in the first place? There is necessary friction when you have a machine, and different parts working together. Zero friction is impossible, but near-zero isn’t. In terms of focusing on things that might cause friction in the flywheel, there’s this list of important parts:
– Interaction with customers: Just how well are you doing with interacting with your customers? What are they really saying, especially online? How well are you handling your business’ reputation? This is the initial tug that prevents a good launch; your reputation as a whole.

The reduction of friction begins with working on what is keeping people from saying good things about your business. In the beginning it might sound like a really tedious and painful process, but like medical surgery, it is a necessary painful phase – one that you need to work on if you want to get ahead.

– Investment in IT – The more robust your IT system and the more experienced and less burdened your staff is, the better off your business will be. This is an unquestionable formula, thanks to endless surveys done in business process solutions providers around the world. Better IT infrastructure equates with faster resolution of problems, a better online experience for everyone, and a team of dedicated staff that are focused on just one thing: customer happiness.

– People skills – Your team is all you have at the end of the day. You can have a kick-ass product and a cool website, but if you have a team of people who are not motivated and lack the necessary skills to get things done, how is your business going to provide customer happiness? It can’t.

Think of all the complaints received by outfits like Blizzard Studios, who take their sweet time in releasing games, only to crumble daily with customer care. Their online forums aren’t much help, and there are literally thousands of complaints online that have eroded the brand’s reputability and reputation through the years. It’s not a pretty sight, and it’s definitely going to hurt the brand in the long term.

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This is a lot to take in, definitely. But when you think about it, it is going to cost you more in the long term trying to generate new leads and customers again and again than just keeping the ones you have right now. That’s a statistical truth that you shouldn’t overlook. The marketing flywheel focuses on customer retention more, so your funnel doesn’t crumble.

There’s no need to change everything overnight, but if you have a working funnel and your lists are becoming more and more unresponsive, maybe it’s time to change the format. Maybe it’s time to look back and ask yourself: how have I kept my old customers and are they coming back for more of the value that I have given them before? This is a huge challenge to more traditional marketers, indeed.

Another excellent reason to try the flywheel is this: that you want to continue the journey with your old customers, not just the new ones. This is a largely ignored concept because we have become too eager with generating new leads again and again. We exhaust the process, and we forget that our niches are basically people, and they are capable of giving you business again and again.