The Inbound Methodology and the Flywheel
You might be wondering how the inbound methodology fits into all this. At HubSpot, we believe so strongly in this shift that we've realigned the 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 offer an amazing customer experience.
For example, in the attract phase, you attract visitors with useful content and remove 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 easier to shop and buy from you by enabling customers 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 use 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 maintain existing ones.
The flywheel also helps reduce friction and 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 our teams are aligned around the inbound methodology, you can provide a more holistic, delightful experience to anyone who interacts with your business.