Inbound Methodology
The traditional marketing method for reaching and acquiring new customers is no longer as effective as it used to be. New concepts and strategies around the marketing field were being experimented all over the world, all the time. One such concept called Inbound Marketing was founded in 2005 by Brian Halligan, who is the co-founder and CEO of HubSpot.
The inbound methodology is the process of converting visitors into customers and promoters of your business. Inbound marketing methods have been used since the digital age for building a strong presence on the internet and for business growth. It focuses on creating quality content to attract leads to the products or services you offer. Traditionally the inbound marketing funnel has been the primary model. However, another method called inbound marketing flywheel model has proven to be more effective than later. Let’s see what a flywheel marketing method is.
Inbound Marketing Flywheel
The flywheel ideology is similar to an incredible energy-efficient machine that stores rotational energy and increases a machine’s momentum. The more energy you feed to it, the faster it spins-provided you remove the friction points that keep it from spinning. The amount of energy it conserves depends on how fast it spins, the amount of friction, and its size.
From a business perspective, the rotation of a flywheel represents the growth of your business. Just like the flywheel, it is remarkable at storing and releasing energy. The customer base is the center of the wheel. The fuel for its work can either be in the form of customers who become your regular clients or bring new visitors by promoting your product in their network. Inbound businesses that use the flywheel model builds trust, credibility, and momentum among their customers.
In a typical flywheel model, the entire business strategy is made to revolve around the customers and their experience of interaction with the services you offer. So instead of putting customers at the end of a deal, think about how customers can make your business grow.
How do Inbound Flywheel Marketing works?
The inbound flywheel marketing method is divided into three stages:
1. Attract
The goal of this stage is to attract leads to your business or the services you offer. Leads are the ‘visitors’ who come across your website or advertisements. They might not have any intention to become a customer, yet would have the means to afford your services. You can establish a point of contact with the leads utilizing the features that include paid advertisements, content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization. The essential purpose at the end of this phase is to earn people’s attention and not force it.
2. Engage
Once you attract the leads, communicate with them by various means to turn the leads into prospects. Prospects are defined as potential customers in business terms. In this phase, you focus on building relationships with the leads who have had initial contact with your brand, to introduce your products or services through personalized methods. Some of these include personalized emails, lead enrichment, multichannel communication(chats, messaging, etc.).
3. Delight
The delighted customers who are satisfied by the product you sell and the customer service become regular customers or become promoters of the products/services they love or both. Just like a rotating flywheel, the chance of customers bringing in new leads or prospects increases with the level of their satisfaction with your services. Thus starts the next cycle of newly referred visitors. You attract new leads, engage them with your services, and focus on their satisfaction to repeat the cycle.
Finding The Friction Points
You must eliminate all the possible opposing forces that may slow down your business’s progress with the customers. In order to do so, you need to identify which area of your service requires repair and what kind of strategy you can apply to make the process smooth again. In a customer-oriented process on which the flywheel marketing operates, the priority should always revolve around customer satisfaction. The less the friction is, the more the flywheel will rotate, and more energy will be conserved for use.
Why use the Flywheel Method?
The Flywheel method’s major advantage is that the businesses adopting this method will have natural and organic growth, which results in loyal customers who will stick with them for the long term. The aspect of getting a beneficial outcome will be as slow as it can be. However, the foundation of a brand laid on a flywheel ideology will be solid. It will help you gain advocates for your company that can boost your growth. Rather than getting the sales done alone, the inbound flywheel marketing will help you focus on the overall progress and point out the areas in which your business needs more work.
