Flywheel_A_New_Digital_Marketing_Model
Flywheel_A_New_Digital_Marketing_Model
Abstract
The flywheel model has gained popularity in marketing as
an alternative to the conventional sales funnel paradigm.
The flywheel model emphasises the value of client
happiness, engagement, and loyalty through a customer-
centric strategy to marketing, sales, and customer support.
Customers are seen as the primary driver of growth, and
marketing, sales, and support teams collaborate to keep the
flywheel turning. Flywheel, offers new ways to engage and
re-engage existing leads and customers to enhance the
brand value of any product. The flywheel marketing
approach emphasises the notion that client connections are
ongoing and that a happy client may be a strong driver of
company expansion. It nudges companies to prioritise
long-term success over only short-term revenue.
Organisations may establish a self-sustaining cycle of
growth by offering excellent experiences at every level of
the customer journey. The paper also includes the inter-
connection of Digital marketing strategies with the new
model which offers the new tactics for engaging the
existing and new customers at every step of their journey
with the brand or the firm. With the empirical
understanding of the previous researches, the paper will
conclude with how digital marketing strategies can be
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Introduction
Business world has gone into many transformations and the biggest
ever transformation that has ever taken place, if asked any marketer
is the customer. The customer of most of the business has gone into
number of evolutions. Today’s customer is informative
knowledgeable and exposed to global standards customers. He is
more educated and digitally oriented. All these have made him more
demanding and expecting more from every purchase. Business
should be cognizant and take care of these demands and
expectations above other business activities. Companies make long-
term decisions and work upon long-term relationships without
compromising upon their values and principles. In short,
Organizations need to be more customer-centric.
Organizations need to lineup their success story with their
customers. They can scale up and be more sustainable by creating a
delightful experience for their customers and thus maintain a steady
record of loyal customers. To be more sustainable and to retain their
loyal customers, organizations need to deliver outstanding and
exceptional customer experience.
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Vazirani & Jaiwant The Flywheel: A New Digital Marketing Model
Source: https://www.hubspot.com/flywheel
Attract phase: In this stage the company endeavours to attract
audience or visitors to the company’s product or service and even to
the company’s website. This is achieved with the help of creative
content in its marketing communications. The main aim at this level
is to garner more attentions and awareness of the customers the
company. Organizations employ different strategies and tools like
content marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization,
referral marketing, social media marketing, targeted paid
advertising, and conversion rate optimization.
Engage phase: This phase aims to get the customers more engaged
with the company. The company selects and use the preferred tie
and platforms where the customer is more comfortable to get
engaged to the communications and activities of the company.
This stage aims at building a stronger relationship with the
customers. The company goes in for database mining and database
segmentation and then reach out to the target customers with
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Vazirani & Jaiwant The Flywheel: A New Digital Marketing Model
Review of Literature
(Meyer, Autumn/Fall 2019) has clearly defined how the marketing
funnel is a failed approach to be followed by marketer during this
technically oriented time and how Funnel can take up the new
leading place, helping and guiding the marketers. Author has also
explored the concept and application of inbound marketing.
Research paper had a discussion about the improvising the process
of generating leads and higher sales, with the reduction in different
types of friction and identifying the current marketing strategies and
suggesting a few new ones to increase the momentum of the wheel.
(Even, SPRING 2014-15) in the research titled “Where mobile fits in
the marketing funnel sandwich” explained about the focus of
marketers on the mobiles as a choice for connecting with customers.
Paper had also explained about how role of mobiles is being
monitored by the marketers with a focus on engaging and re-
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Vazirani & Jaiwant The Flywheel: A New Digital Marketing Model
Promotional Marketing
Stranger
Evangelism Ambassador
Visitor
Marketing Targeted
Marketing
Customers
Engage
Customer Viewer
Interactive Personalised
Marketing Marketing
Attract
Attract phase is a very crucial stage. The success of the entire
flywheel begins at this stage. The brand usually shelves out some
attractive promotion content to catch the attention of perfect
strangers to the brand. People unknown about the brand and its
offerings or people with very less information are drawn to the
brand, its website though some useful content which catchy and
attention drawing. Companies deploy many digital marketing tools
like content marketing, search engine optimization, social media
marketing, social selling, targeted paid advertising, and conversion
rate optimization.
Promotional marketing attracts the strangers to visit the websites,
blogs or any other social media pages or platforms. These visitors are
inquisitive about the brand or the company and its offerings and
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Engage
The second phase is Engage phase where the company endeavours
to engage the casual visitor having limited knowledge about the
company and its product and convert him into a more dedicated
viewer. Marketer connects with the visitor with some targeted
content and urges him to view more brand information and learn
about more brand offerings. The digital marketing uses desired
timeline and platforms according to the viewers. The main focus
during this stage is to begin a relationship with the viewer through
digital marketing tools and content. Marketers use tools like
corporate website content and personalized emails, database
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Delight
The delight is the final phase of the Flywheel. In this phase the
company focuses on supporting and empowering the customers to
become brand ambassadors. The company gets involved in making
the customers successful though the use of its products and services.
Company’s success is in the success of the customer. A successful
customer is happy and satisfied and becomes a loyal customer and
a big asset for the company. Some of the tools used by the company
during this stage are forces you 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.
A loyal customer is driven to the point of delight though better and
enhanced customer service and satisfaction. A delighted customer is
the biggest asset to the brand because he further drives and rolls the
wheel by bringing new customers to the brand and the phase of the
Flywheel start all over again.
The delight stage aims at offering an extraordinary customer
experience that eventually leads to customer delight. Brand must
focus on the users’ needs, motivation desires and aspirations to
arrive at an apt combination of customer experience. Brands must
ensure that the customers are happy and satisfied with the brand
and remain so for long. The basic aim of customer delight is to drive
the customers to share their experience with the world and generate
new customers for the brand. The customers now must become un-
commissioned and unofficial brand ambassadors.
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its founder, Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, which named it
as “The Flywheel Effect”.
The Amazon’s flywheel focused on three major areas – Low cost, a
big selection catalogue and a great customer experience. These three
strategies acted as a force to start the wheel’s rotation and keep the
flywheel rotating. To avoid the friction, one of the major strategies
adopted by Amazon was the Cash Machine Strategy, which helped
to enlarge the business of Amazon by incorporating other products
and influencers to keep the smooth momentum of the wheel. Instead
of distributing the profits to the shareholders, Amazon had tried to
improvise the customer service and also efforts to keep the pricing
lowest. The strong and efficient distribution network of Amazon has
made the hassle-free shopping experience across the world by
Amazon customers.
In Case of Pepperfry.com –
In 2012, the firm has launched their digital presence as a website
named as pepperfry.com. the vision behind the firm was “To be the
place where the modern Indians shop for their homes”. The firm has
constantly shown in the growth of revenue for every financial year
specially in last five years. The core values of the firm include –
Doing more with less, Pioneering and Juggad. The latest records say,
the firm has more than 60 lacs registered users, more than 40
Pepperfry Studios. Monthly there are more than 120 lacs of customer
visits. The product list has approximately 1.2 lacs of products to
choose from. The company claims that in every 15 seconds they sell
an item. The most commonly sold item is the Coffee Table. The firm
has a high-tech mobile app enhanced with superior augmented
reality features, which ensure customer engagement. By end of 2019,
the firm has served 6 million customer’s orders. The market presence
of the firm is seen in three different ways – As Studios, As Offices
and the Warehouses.
Pepperfry follows a “Managed Marketplace Model”. In this model,
the orders are dispatched directly from the vendor to the different
customers across the country. To application of the Flywheel model
can be understood as follows:
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customers to contact with the current buyers and the recent buyers
will get a space to share their experience with brand association.
To Delight – The target audience of Pepperfry is the Urban, educated
and sophisticated populace. Keeping in mind the expectations of the
target population, Pepperfry has made sure the customer experience
should be taken care as prime objective of every employee and
supplier of the firm. The assured timely delivery, a strong product
portfolio, a great delivery experience with multiple loyalty programs,
helps the customer to be associated and advocate the brand in the
market.
Conclusion
The presence of the e-market space has given a tremendous
opportunity to marketers to reach out the target audience. But on the
same time, this made organizations to work so firmly, accurately,
efficiently, because as customers are easy to be reached out by
marketers, same way they are easily approachable by other
customers too. Firms have to grasp this opportunity and aligned
each department to work with customer centric approach, making
sure a higher level of customer experience during the pre, during
and post purchase. And the same satisfied customers can help the
brand to leverage the momentum of successful strategies adopted by
the firm. The same has been adapted by Amazon and Pepperfry and
many other firms. Both the firms have tried to enhance their business
for higher customer experiences as well as working backward, to
have a smooth running of business like partnering with third party,
associating third party products as per their own standards, having
their own delivery system to ensure flawless and timely delivery.
The digital marketing gives a way for the firm to attach with their
suppliers and the customers at the same time. The concept of
Flywheel will add on to look forward the digital marketing strategies
in a different and collaborative way to have a better and enlarging
centre with higher profits for the firms.
References
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Vazirani & Jaiwant The Flywheel: A New Digital Marketing Model