We probably know all about them: funnels. The pipe someone goes through, from getting to know your brand to become real brand ambassadors. But what if you can use this funnel throughout your company and recycle energy you’ve already put into it? That’s what we’ll talk about in this blog about funnels and flywheel!
Funnels
Every marketer uses them: funnels. These are the funnels where we crown our visitors to customers or even real evangelists. Like every funnel you begin big, lots of people know about your brand. Every phase makes this big pile of people just a little bit smaller until you get only a handful of people who will buy something from you. Or an even smaller group that will repeatedly buy from you.
Although most of us only know about a funnel that leads from prospects to sales, funnels can be used throughout your organization and focus on any goal you can think of. At Sterc, we use five different funnels: branding, leads, sales, service, and recruitment.
Although most phases are the same, with these funnels, you’ll not only focus on getting new leads. These funnels help you to focus on the branding of your organization, finding new employees and improving your service too. Because each funnel focuses on a specific goal of your strategy, these five funnels are a crucial part of our Sterc model.
Do you want to get started with your strategy? Download our Sterc model and get in just four steps to your online strategy.
Flywheel
Although funnels have done an excellent job for years, there’s just one disadvantage: the end of it. It’s great that you have obtained a new customer or a new employee, but what do you do after that? And that’s where HubSpot’s flywheel comes in. With this flywheel, you don’t stop when you get new customers, but you make them stay involved with your brand. You bring them a step further than just sales and take them to the delight phase. This is the phase where you keep helping your customer, starting up new projects with them, and have a continuous collaboration.
Force & Friction
You can use force and friction to let the flywheel spin or stop. Spinning the flywheel is done by putting energy, force, into activities that help your leads and customers. Think of events, sending newsletters, having a live chat, or something completely different. Anything that helps you, and especially your customers, is seen as force.
However, some things oppose the flywheel from spinning, which is called friction. Friction shows itself when certain things aren’t helping your leads and customers. Think of a website that isn’t mobile-friendly, or slow. Or ads that don’t focus on the customer’s needs, and annoying pop-ups are also friction. Friction is something you want to prevent from happening, to keep helping your customers and let the flywheel spin as hard as possible.
A continuous collaboration
The flywheel focuses on every department of your organization. Because you continuously generate new leads, make them customers, and keep helping your customers. Like our Sterc funnels are not only focusing on sales but also service and recruitment, with the flywheel, you also bring your departments together. This cooperation will make sure your focus is on helping the client. And that’s what inbound marketing is all about.
You help the customer with a chatbot, for example. Showing the visitors of your website where to go quickly, or it can easily create a ticket. With HubSpot, you can even generate meeting links and place these on your website or email. Now your prospects and customers can schedule a meeting more comfortable than ever because the meeting link only shows the dates and times you're available to meet. Never do you have to email back and forward, and your customers can get in contact with you easier than ever. Or you could show a pop-up form, so your visitors only have to fill in a few fields and is just clicks away from your valuable content.
And that’s how you can use the flywheel to recycle energy to keep helping those who’ve finished the funnel. Customers will continuously receive help, so you can delight them and let them become evangelists. You’ll discover more about the phases of the customer journey and the buyer’s journey in our next blog about the customer journey.
