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Why Marketing Flywheels Work

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Re: Why Marketing Flywheels Work

#51

Post by csallen »

libertine wrote: post #28
csallen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flywheels aren't a new concept. I first encountered them in Brad Stone's excellent book about Amazon, The Everything Store , which I believe was published in 2014. Stone explained how Bezos and crew discovered their flywheel in 2001 : > Bezos and his lieutenants sketched their own virtuous cycle, which they believe powered their business. It went something like this: Lower prices led to more customer visits. More cus…

Like I said in the first sentence, I wasn't criticizing the content, neither I'm saying flywheel is a new concept. Some call it flywheels, others call it engines, others call it funnel. David Ogilvy didn't name it in 1963, with the Confessions of an Advertising Man, but the concept was there: >Why did I write it? First, to attract new clients to my advertising agency. Second, to condition the market for a public offe…

Engines might be an appropriate analogy to flywheels, but a funnel is a different thing entirely, as is your quote from David Ogilvy.

A funnel typically represents the customers' journey, with some amount of dropoff at each step along the way, e.g. discover the site --> sign up --> become active --> convert to paid. And although each step of a funnel leads to the next one, the last step of the funnel doesn't loop back around to feed into the first step, which means the funnel isn't a closed loop that feeds into itself.

A flywheel, on the other hand, is always a closed loop. And most commonly the steps on the flywheel are business strategies, advantages, and activities, rather than steps along a user journey, e.g. provide a wider selection of goods from sellers --> make buyers happier --> get more buyers --> attract more sellers --> repeat.

Just Google Image search a picture of a flywheel and a funnel and the difference should become immediately clear to you. And note that you can combine the two concepts. For example, in the flywheel, the arrow between attracting more sellers and getting a wider selection of goods could be represented as a funnel.

Finally, your David Ogilvy quote is neither a funnel nor a flywheel. It's just a list of three distinct benefits, all of which derive from him writing something, but none of which feed into the others (or at least he doesn't describe how they do.)

Re: Why Marketing Flywheels Work

#52

Post by csallen »

Jommi wrote: post #41
csallen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flywheels aren't a new concept. I first encountered them in Brad Stone's excellent book about Amazon, The Everything Store , which I believe was published in 2014. Stone explained how Bezos and crew discovered their flywheel in 2001 : > Bezos and his lieutenants sketched their own virtuous cycle, which they believe powered their business. It went something like this: Lower prices led to more customer visits. More cus…

This is not a fly wheel, this is economies of scale. There are established words for these things. Why do we invent new ones that don't make sense? Flywheel output less than the input is. Why would we use that word?

Economies of scale is a distinct concept that's different than a flywheel. Yes, EoS plays an intimate role in powering a lot of flywheels. For example, the section of Amazon's flywheel that allows them to offer lower prices as a result of having more sellers works via EoS. However, it wouldn't make any sense to try to describe the entire flywheel concept using the term EoS, because lots of information would be lost, specifically the entire concept of a flywheel: that it feeds back into itself in a loop. Calling a flywheel EoS would be akin to calling a racetrack a curve.

As for whether or not "flywheel" is the best term, I think it's pretty good. Yes, real-life flywheels lose momentum due to friction, unless outside force is exerted. But the same is true with marketing flywheels, which is why all of them will have at least one step that requires the injection of outside energy, e.g. bringing in new customers.

Re: Why Marketing Flywheels Work

#53

Post by ignostic »

jressey wrote: post #10
threeseed wrote: post #5

No this is how the marketing industry works. Hubspot gets bored of using the term "inbound marketing" for everything they do. So they pivot to "marketing flywheel" which they popularised a couple of years ago. It results in a lot of mindshare and searches and so smaller players create their own marketing flywheel content in order to siphon away some of this traffic. It's all very cynical and contrived.

Internet 'marketing' is a fascinating pyramid scheme, where established players create content to help new entrants create content that will expose them to newer entrants. Somehow this should get everybody paid (not just the big players selling the domains and website creation tools). A minuscule number of new entrants have achieved some form of success, so of course they get a louder and more influential voice.

I think you're confusing internet marketing with the people who talk about internet marketing.

Marketing done right is basically the 'what people want' in 'build things people want' with a focus on what they're actually willing to pay for. I routinely kill ideas because the market is too small or profitability is too hard to achieve. Understanding your audience then building content and product around it is harder and more valuable than HN seems to believe. I've been very successful by developing this skill and learning how to build things. Good marketers have domain and industry specific knowledge that doesn't go viral in marketing circles because it's too specialized. I'm also not about to get on a public forum and tell my competition how I'm beating them.

Internet marketers who idolize internet marketing speakers are insufferable, I'll give you that. It comes from a good place of wanting to learn by listening to the experts. Unfortunately, these experts spend more time talking about how to be like them rather than how to build something people want. I think this also comes from a good place: let me help you achieve success like I have found.

Meanwhile the more technical marketers roll their eyes, get to work, and quietly make their companies money.

Re: Why Marketing Flywheels Work

#54

Post by onefuncman »

redelbee wrote: post #49
Jommi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's hard about multi channel attribution? Would love a primer on this.

A consumer goods company operates two brands that sell the same products to different target audiences. The company works from a database that comprises 15 million+ entries for customers/leads/etc. Each brand sends one email a day, mails 6 catalogs throughout the year on different schedules based on seasonal buying patterns, runs search/display/etc ads across Google and Bing every day, runs Facebook/Insta/Messenger/e…

I just wait for Amazon to come out with some sort of affiliate payments integration with their Just Walk Out tech to know whether attribution is possible at scale...

Re: Why Marketing Flywheels Work

#55

Post by laurex »

arkades wrote: post #18
libertine wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you don't know what marketing is, I guess that any concept out of ignorance suits it, right? The same as someone saying that a web developer just copy and pastes code, or that a graphic designer just make squiggles in illustrator, and the list goes on. I recommend you start by here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing

Not the previous poster but: I've tried picking up things a cut above random pop books about marketing and haven't found any depth there. If you have any links to somewhere I can actually do a deep dive on marketing, I'd appreciate it.

"Marketing" is a broad term; it's like saying 'what's a good book on software engineering?' What are you wanting to learn about marketing? There are interesting books that give you lots of tactics for early-stage startups (Traction by Gabriel Weinberg, for example); books that tell how to think about Brand Strategy (for example, Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller); books that delve into psychology (Influence by Robert Cialdini); and many other things. Marketing encompasses high-level strategy, brand, research, market sizing, messaging, positioning, product marketing, social media, content marketing, PR and earned media, grassroots marketing, and the list goes on. Within each of these topics there are many different approaches and philosophies. High-level pop books will be fairly light on how each of these work.

Re: Why Marketing Flywheels Work

#56

Post by lowdose »

hyko wrote: post #44
rsweeney21 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing flywheels power money printing machines, not electric turbines. This article isn't meant to require an understanding of physics. It's meant to help people not familiar with marketing understand the principal of building momentum in a channel.

That’s not my argument. What I’m saying is that a flywheel is a poor analogy for what is being described. If you understand what a flywheel is, and I tell you that there is such a thing as a “marketing flywheel”, you’re no closer to understanding what I’m talking about. A much better physical analogy would be a chain reaction, or something like compounding if you wanted a mathematical one: i.e. anything where the ini…

So there is also no such thing as a business model flywheel like a platform as Amazon for example?

https://medium.com/aws-enterprise-collection/your-enterprise...

Re: Why Marketing Flywheels Work

#57

Post by basch »

libertine wrote: post #9

I'm not here to criticize the content, just the to vent a frustration as a marketer: Why does this industry keep repacking/renaming concepts just to sound like something new... it's like many get value out of perceived progress, when in reality it's just something that has been done for years. This makes me want to step away from this discipline honestly. Instead of trying to compact knowledge to try to make actual l…

What does school teach now? Is it still the four P's or did new age terms like inbound marketing replace old nomenclature?

I like the argument, that the main thing thats changed in marketing since the 50's is what everything is called.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/12/everything-the-tech-world-...

Re: Why Marketing Flywheels Work

#58

Post by hyko »

lowdose wrote: post #56
hyko wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not my argument. What I’m saying is that a flywheel is a poor analogy for what is being described. If you understand what a flywheel is, and I tell you that there is such a thing as a “marketing flywheel”, you’re no closer to understanding what I’m talking about. A much better physical analogy would be a chain reaction, or something like compounding if you wanted a mathematical one: i.e. anything where the ini…

So there is also no such thing as a business model flywheel like a platform as Amazon for example? https://medium.com/aws-enterprise-collection/your-enterprise...

Yes.

All these examples seem to stem from a fundamental misunderstanding about what a flywheel is and what it can do. They are primarily for storing and releasing energy; they don’t generate their own momentum. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel

Re: Why Marketing Flywheels Work

#59

Post by ryanwaggoner »

hyko wrote: post #58
lowdose wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there is also no such thing as a business model flywheel like a platform as Amazon for example? https://medium.com/aws-enterprise-collection/your-enterprise...

Yes. All these examples seem to stem from a fundamental misunderstanding about what a flywheel is and what it can do. They are primarily for storing and releasing energy; they don’t generate their own momentum. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel

Who cares? Seriously, it’s a metaphor that no one has issues understanding, so why the pedantic nitpicking?

Re: Why Marketing Flywheels Work

#60

Post by karatestomp »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #59
hyko wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. All these examples seem to stem from a fundamental misunderstanding about what a flywheel is and what it can do. They are primarily for storing and releasing energy; they don’t generate their own momentum. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel

Who cares? Seriously, it’s a metaphor that no one has issues understanding, so why the pedantic nitpicking?

I'd never heard of it and my best guess based on the name would have been some kind of way of "storing up" marketing effort to release it later, like if you had extra marketing $$$ and needed to use it before the end of the quarter but would prefer to spread it out.
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