We are probably all familiar with the sales and marketing funnel. The idea is that your sales and marketing strategy is like a great big bucket; your marketing activities should be filling the bucket at the top with people who are new to your brand and telling them why they should buy your product. All these activities should gradually then move those people through your customer journey, down the bucket to the sales bit at the bottom where they hit BUY NOW and become your customer. It’s a pretty straightforward way of looking at it and makes perfect sense, right?
Well, the thing is the world of marketing has moved on since the funnel, leaving it a little bit out of date. The key reason why the flywheel works is that it takes into account the biggest shift in marketing over the last 15 years: that your audience are now in charge of your brand. Yes you heard me; your audience are in charge. It doesn’t matter how slick your branding is or how powerful your message, if you don’t deliver a great product or service (or both) your audience now have the power to undo all of this work. With the advent of social media, review culture, and a generally more advertising-savvy audience, your customers are now able to tell you when you’re not doing a good enough job and to vote with their feet, voices and keyboards to spread that message far and wide. Marketing is no longer a one-way broadcast channel, it’s a two-way CONVERSATION. Instead of a linear ourney where the funnel neatly takes your customer from point A (where they know nothing about you) to point B (where they buy your product), the flywheel takes into account that a large chunk of your marketing effort will end up being done by the customers themselves. Well, the happy customers at least!
So why is this important? It’s important because if you don’t listen to your customers, you do so at your peril. Bad reviews not only damage your brand but if you don’t learn from that feedback your business will never move forward. In today’s review culture it’s too easy to chase after five-star reviews and to want to minimise one star reviews, but you can learn a lot more from your unhappy customers about what improvements you need to make. Human beings learn far more from failure than they do from success.
As a Small Business Owner, what can you do? To start with, fill out your own flywheel! Think about which marketing channels you are using at each stage of a customer’s journey with your brand. How do your customers interact with these channels? How do they interact with each other during these times? If you are a heavy user of two-way marketing channels at any point in your flywheel, make sure you are actively engaging with your customers – happy and unhappy alike. You’ll be amazed how quickly you and your business can move forward, fast! As always, don’t forget you can talk to me too! I love to work with Small Biz Owners about their customers and their marketing activities. Book in a free consultation and let’s chat!