How To Use a Marketing Flywheel To Build Lasting Loyalty

The marketing flywheel is a modern framework that puts customers at the center of everything a business does. For more than a century prior, marketers relied on the linear marketing funnel to map the customer journey. In a traditional sales funnel, customers move through a series of stages, from awareness to purchase. There’s a beginning and an end to the process. However, a new paradigm—the marketing flywheel—emerged in 2018, offering a cyclical view of the buyer’s journey, with customers at the center. Instead of a one-way funnel, the flywheel emphasizes continuous growth, creating a self-sustaining loop of engagement and loyalty.

What is a marketing flywheel?

Originally designed by HubSpot in 2018, a marketing flywheel visualizes the customer journey as a continuous cycle focused on making customers love your brand and refer others. The marketing flywheel’s three stages—attract, engage, and delight—represent the cycle a customer goes through, ideally over and over again. 

The term “flywheel” is an engineering concept referring to any wheel that builds on its own momentum using inertia. It starts slow, but the more effort you put in, the more momentum you begin to see. Eventually, progress becomes self-sustaining.

In a marketing flywheel, this same idea is reflected throughout your marketing efforts to fuel business growth. The effects of your marketing efforts are cumulative, building brand awareness and loyalty over time.

How the marketing flywheel works

A marketing flywheel has three stages: attract, engage, and delight. Here’s what each stage entails: 

• Attract. Generate interest in your offerings within your target market, typically using an inbound marketing strategy that shares engaging content, social media posts, blog posts, or pay-per-click (PPC) ads. It can also involve mass-market advertising or outbound sales efforts.

• Engage. Connect with people already familiar with your brand and deepen those relationships. Some actions from the attract stage, like content, ads, and other inbound and outbound marketing tactics, remain the same; however, the goal shifts from building brand awareness to fostering ongoing relationships that convert prospective customers into loyal customers.

• Delight. Focus on existing customers. At this point, your goal is to ensure they are thrilled to refer your brand to others. You might achieve this through exceptional customer service, surprise gifts, or unique unboxing experiences.

The flywheel model treats prospective customers as individuals cycling through these stages rather than leads that “complete” a sales funnel. As you improve each flywheel stage, you add force to sustain its momentum. 

When customers genuinely connect with your brand, they become brand advocates and refer new customers. These new customers already have a positive view of your brand, so they’re more likely to convert and remain loyal. They then accelerate the flywheel by bringing in even more like-minded customers.

Marketing flywheel vs. marketing funnel: What’s the difference?

A marketing flywheel is a cyclical framework, while a marketing funnel is linear. Here’s more on how they differ: 

Marketing funnel

The traditional marketing funnel has three stages: awareness, consideration, and conversion. These stages gradually filter out prospects until a fraction of those who entered the funnel make a purchase. Once a prospect becomes a customer, the funnel ends, requiring new prospects to restart the process. This approach can result in high customer acquisition costs (CAC) and the ongoing need for lead generation; however, it can be the right mode of thinking if the nature of the product or service means customers are unlikely to return any time soon. Think real estate transactions, custom landscaping projects, cosmetic surgeries, and other highly personalized, expensive purchases. 

Marketing flywheel

A marketing flywheel uses market research tools and ongoing investment in current customers to attract new ones. Instead of considering the conversion process complete once a purchase is made, a new cycle is just beginning to ensure ongoing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and referrals. This can lead to more customers turning into brand advocates, which in turn reduces overall customer acquisition costs. 

Tips for excelling at every stage of the marketing flywheel

• Prioritize the customer experience
• Leverage data and insights
• Build relationships
• Listen, improve, and adapt
• Encourage advocacy and referrals

Applying force and reducing friction make the flywheel spin faster. In a marketing flywheel, applying force means delivering consistent value to customers, while reducing friction means eliminating obstacles in the customer journey. Here are five ways to do that:

Prioritize the customer experience

Focus on providing a positive customer experience. If your customers are happy, they’re more likely to proceed to the next stage. In the attract stage, first impressions are everything. Anticipate customers’ pain points and deliver high-quality content that addresses their questions.

For example, the clean beauty company Kopari uses a content flywheel to capture interest and encourage engagement longevity. Once summer rolls around, they focus on awareness campaigns, with their creator community sharing specific reasons to choose Kopari SPF. At the engage stage, they use tailored communication, like ad retargeting and personalized emails. You can do this as well. For example, if a prospect views a product page but doesn’t purchase, send them a targeted ad for that item. Then, monitor ad frequency to avoid overwhelming your prospects. 

It’s all about balancing helpful content that improves awareness while avoiding an all-out bombardment. A sweet spot is up to three impressions per week per prospect; however, newer brands may want to scale up because their brand recognition is lower, while more established brands or longer campaigns may want to scale down to avoid fatigue.

Finally, at the delight stage, ensure customers feel heard and appreciated so they remain engaged. Use loyalty programs, modeled after successful programs like Lulus’ Love Rewards and Jaxon Lane Rewards, to drive referrals and reward repeat buyers. Proactively ask your customers for feedback as well, and let it guide your product road map, as the bridesmaid dress brand Birdy Grey does. Automated campaigns, delivered with tools like Shopify Messaging, can keep this stage going with minimal effort on your part. 

Leverage data and insights

Use analytics tools like Google Analytics and Shopify’s built-in reports to track metrics like total sessions, conversion rate, and customer acquisition cost to see what’s working and what’s losing momentum. From there, you can optimize campaigns accordingly. Predictive analytics tools like Shopify Plus and Klaviyo can help identify customers at risk of churning and proactively offer personalized incentives before they drop off. 

Leverage cross-channel data from your website, social media channels, email, and paid advertising to create a cohesive experience across all customer touchpoints. For example, if someone clicks over to your website after seeing a TikTok video, retarget them with a Meta ad or personalized email. 

You’ll measure each part of the flywheel with different metrics, depending on your business. Here are the most common at each stage:

• Attract. Track total website visits, ad impressions, and click-through rate (CTR) to understand how new customers are finding you. If website sessions are low, you may want to double down on marketing strategies designed to increase organic traffic. If ad impressions are high but CTR is low, you may want to revise your call-to-action (CTA) copy to be clearer.

• Engage. Look at first-time purchases and conversion rate to assess how effectively your store turns visitors into customers. A low conversion rate might signal checkout issues or unclear messaging.

• Delight.Lifetime value (LTV), returning purchases, and Net Promoter Score show you whether customers come back and how they feel about their experience. Consider sending personalized offers to turn one-time purchasers into long-term fans.

Build relationships

Turning one-time purchasers into loyal customers is about connection. The personal touch is core to the marketing flywheel’s goal of turning customers into brand evangelists through meaningful connections. The best way to do this is to have an authentic brand voice, deliver consistent value, and, most of all, listen to your customers. 

For example, Jono Padolfi Designs makes handcrafted ceramic dinnerware beloved by Michelin-star restaurants. He leans into incorporating his customers’ feedback when crafting each piece and its price point, working with chefs directly to understand what they could afford, then sourcing materials to meet their budget. This makes his customers feel part of the story, turning collectors into repeat buyers.

Listen, improve, and adapt

Create feedback loops between your customers and your employees by monitoring survey responses, social media comments, and customer support tickets, and make sure those insights are shared across departments. This builds a shared understanding of how customers perceive your brand. 

Traditional funnels run the risk of creating siloed teams because there’s a handoff that happens between each stage. The marketing team brings in prospects, the sales team turns them into paying customers, customer support reps manage post-purchase issues, and so on. In a marketing flywheel, it’s crucial that departments work together to attract, engage, and delight customers.

To adapt to changing customer preferences, track repeat purchase behavior, return reasons, or email open rates. A drop in repeat purchases might mean a new competitor has entered the market, or a spike in returns tagged “not as expected” might signal unclear product descriptions. What might have worked two years ago may not be relevant today, so it’s important to closely track these signals.

Some brands use experimentation to stay ahead. For example, Ridge tests new product ideas by creating 3D renders and running ads to see if shoppers convert based on the renders. This approach has allowed them to prioritize high-interest items like rings and pass on lower-performing ideas like t-shirts, socks, or water bottles.

Encourage advocacy and referrals

Customer advocacy is a key part of the marketing flywheel. While happy customers naturally spread the word about your brand and bring in new prospects, you can create high-impact brand advocates through targeted marketing efforts:

• Offer referral programs or incentives, like discounts for purchases made through their referral links.

• Ask for user-generated content to highlight real customer success stories on your website and social channels.

• Send a post-purchase email series asking for a review.

• Create a brand ambassador program.

“Virality is rented, retention is owned,” says Divy Ojha, founder of Odd Bunch says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. 

Divy tracks retention quarterly and annually, and also by geography and product. This helps identify the likelihood of a customer becoming an advocate if they refer someone within the first four weeks post-purchase. “You can't even compare [referrals with paid],” he says. “When you look at a community of a hundred thousand users, it's so powerful to activate that and turn them into brand advocates.”