The Inbound Methodology and the Flywheel. Hi !

You might be wondering how the inbound methodology fits into all of this. At HubSpot, we believe so strongly in this shift that we've realigned our entire company around the flywheel. We’ve even redesigned the inbound methodology to teach you how to use the flywheel model to grow your business.

That’s why the new inbound methodology is a circle. When you use the inbound methodology as a foundation, the three phases of your flywheel are attract, engage, and delight. By applying force to these three phases, you can provide an amazing customer experience. 

For example, in the attract phase, you attract visitors with useful content and eliminate barriers as they try to learn about your company.  The key is to earn people's attention, not force it. Some forces you can apply are content marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, social selling, targeted paid advertising, and conversion rate optimization.

In the engage phase, you make it easy to shop and buy from you by enabling buyers to engage with you on their preferred timeline and channels. Focus on opening relationships, not just closing deals. Some forces include website and email personalization, database segmentation, marketing automation, lead nurturing, multichannel communication (chat, phone, messaging, email), sales automation, lead scoring, and try before you buy programs.

And finally, in the delight phase, you help, support, and empower customers to reach their goals. Remember, customer success is your success. Some forces you can leverage are self-service (Knowledge base, chatbot), proactive customer service, multichannel availability (chat, messaging, phone, email), ticketing systems, automated onboarding, customer feedback surveys, and loyalty programs.

Companies that choose to use the flywheel model over other models have a huge advantage because they aren’t the only ones helping their business grow — their customers are helping them grow as well.

That’s a much more efficient way to attract new customers and retain existing ones.

The flywheel also helps eliminate friction and reduce clumsy handoffs between teams. In the funnel model, customers are often shuffled from marketing to sales to customer service. This can lead to a pretty unpleasant customer experience. But with the flywheel model, the onus is on every team in the entire company to attract, engage, and delight customers. When all of your teams are aligned around the inbound methodology, you can provide a more holistic, delightful experience to anyone who interacts with your business.

That’s a much more efficient way to attract new customers and retain existing ones.

The flywheel also helps eliminate friction and reduce clumsy handoffs between teams. In the funnel model, customers are often shuffled from marketing to sales to customer service. This can lead to a pretty unpleasant customer experience. But with the flywheel model, the onus is on every team in the entire company to attract, engage, and delight customers. When all of your teams are aligned around the inbound methodology, you can provide a more holistic, delightful experience to anyone who interacts with your business.

How It Works

As we mentioned above, the amount of energy, or momentum, your flywheel contains depends on three things:

1. How fast you spin it
2. How much friction there is
3. How big it is

The most successful companies will adjust their business strategies to address all three. The speed of your flywheel increases when you add force to areas that have the biggest impact. Forces are programs and strategies you implement to speed up your flywheel. For example, inbound marketing, a freemium model, frictionless selling, a customer referral program, paid advertising, and investing in your customer service team are all forces. By focusing on how you can make your customers successful, they’re more likely to relay their success to potential customers.

Since you’re applying force to your flywheel, you also need to make sure nothing is opposing it — that means eliminating friction from your business strategy.  Friction is anything that slows down your flywheel. For example, poor internal processes, lack of communication between teams, or misalignment between your customers and your employees. You can reduce friction by looking at how your teams are structured, why customers are churning, and where prospects are getting stuck in the buyer’s journey. Are all your teams aligned or are they operating in silos? Is your pricing straightforward or is it cluttered with confusing fees? Do you allow prospects to connect with you how, when, and where they want or are they forced to follow your strict process?

The more you increase speed and decrease friction, the more you will create promoters of your business. And all those promoters become a force that spins your flywheel. 

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