InboundPune19: HubSpot Flywheel at Play; Proves Funnels are Dead in MarTech

By Sudipto Ghosh On Mar 14, 2019

At an APAC-Focused MarTech Event, HubSpot’s Channel Sales and Content Executives Demonstrated the Power of HubSpot Flywheel and How It Has Replaced Funnels

The term’ funnel’ is embedded deep into every Marketing and Sales conversation. If you discuss MarTech with your people, you will hear all the great things about the funnel and how it has been at the core of Lead Generation campaigns since their inception. However, there is a sense of disappointment in the way that the funnels have failed to evolve with customer expectations and advancements in technology. To disrupt the whole funnel concept prevalent in the MarTech and SalesTech industry, HubSpot has conceived of “The Flywheel” to not only help Marketing and Sales grow, but also ensure that customers are aware of their own role in the journey across various channels and platforms.

Aaron Soh hold forth on the 'good content flywheel'. @HubSpot @SeagullAds #inboundpune19 #growbetter @MarTechSeries pic.twitter.com/A4dctXGwkw

— Rohan_MarTech (@Rohan_MarTech) March 14, 2019

Today, at #InboundPune19, HubSpot APAC’s team was in full-force to demonstrate power of The Flywheel and why it is set to disrupt the whole Martech idea of customer acquisition, engagement. At the event, Shahid Nizami, MD APAC, HubSpot, explained the need to shift focus from funnels to flywheels, applicable across the Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). While funnels are limited in their application to Sales and Marketing campaigns, The Flywheel is far more dynamic.

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Don’t Just Grow, But Grow Better

Shahid, reiterating the philosophy of HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan, narrated why it’s time to “Flywheel-ize” the entire MarTech and SalesTech operations. The Flywheel as it can be applied to Content, Customer Data Management, Social Media, CRM, Customer Experience and Analytics. The crux of The Flywheel lies in the “4 Fs”.

Funnel is Dead.
Flywheel Mechanism is Now.
Remove Friction in Customer LTV.
Generate Force, to reshape how tools, technologies and people interact with customers.

#inboundpune19 Smriti Chopra on the metrics to track.#Growbetter @HubSpot @MarTechSeries @SeagullAds #Martech #Pune pic.twitter.com/mw1z1dNBCv

— Rohan_MarTech (@Rohan_MarTech) March 14, 2019

Clearly, HubSpot sees the future of business growth lies with the companies that “need to put their customers first and do more than just grow — they need to grow better.”

This is what HubSpot’s Flywheel looks like —

Why Inbound Marketing Needs to Evolve and To What Extent?

New technologies and strategies are pushing the bar higher for Marketing, Sales and Service teams, forcing them to automate a bulk of their tasks and mange their man-hours better and effectively. The Inbound Marketing tools and technologies are now transforming the whole idea of where businesses would place customers. The Flywheel shows that Inbound Marketing professionals should strategize their campaigns by envisioning Customer First, as well as Customer Last.

In his session at #InboundPune19, Aaron Soh, Head of Channel Sales, SEA, Greater China and India, HubSpot, demonstrated the various flywheel models that can be deployed for Marketing and Sales. It includes providing free content and sales enablement material, learning resources like free CRM and HubSpot Academy certification, and metric to evaluate performance and NPS values.

#inboundpune19
Aaron Soh @hubspot explaining on sales flywheel pic.twitter.com/EzavBBmvb8

— Shikhashikz (@Shikhashikz) March 14, 2019

The session focused entirely on Marketing Automation, Analytics, CRM integration with traditional HubSpot dashboards and execution of Flywheel across customer LTV. Something, that all attendees were excited to hear and visually embrace. An engrossing session in MarTech, considering there was not a word on trending technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and a small mention about chatbots! Well done, team HubSpot with the Flywheel approach.

To succeed with Inbound Marketing and Sales campaigns, it’s truly the best time to ditch the funnel, and embrace the flywheel.