6 ms·
The term “Marketing Flywheel” doesn’t really enlighten anyone, because that’s not how flywheels work. Flywheels are a store of energy, not an energy multiplier.
by hyko 6y ago
The term “Marketing Flywheel” doesn’t really enlighten anyone, because that’s not how flywheels work. Flywheels are a store of energy, not an energy multiplier.
In a true marketing flywheel, you’d only ever get out slightly less than you put in. By that definition, I have been involved in many marketing flywheels to date.
- gk1 6y agoI believe the idea is that a flywheel maintains momentum and makes the rest of the process easier, as opposed to starting cold each time.
- hyko 6y agoThat’s not what is being described though: “You put in the same amount of work (or less) each time, and get more and more out of it the more you repeat it.”
- phreeza 6y agoI guess that works if the "stuff" you put in is torque, and the effect is the angular velocity? In linear coordinates, they could have called it the marketing frictionless skateboard - the more you kick the faster it goes!
- rsweeney21 6y agoMarketing 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.
- troughway 6y agoSo then would it make more sense to call it a windmill?
- danielharan 6y agoI'd use a snowball, to convey the growing nature.
- waheoo 6y agoOr just say what it is, compounding growth. You guys always gotta make stuff more complicated than it is.
- hwerehqrw 6y agoSo the hope is to use concepts people aren't familiar with to describe other concepts they also aren't familiar with?
- waheoo 6y agoSounds like a typical HN commenter.
- hyko 6y agoThat’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 initial investments fuel outsized returns later on.
- lowdose 6y agoSo 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-s-flywheel-to-the-cloud-67127fe4a369 https://medium.com/aws-enterprise-collection/your-enterprise...
- hyko 6y agoYes. 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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel
- ryanwaggoner 6y agoWho cares? Seriously, it’s a metaphor that no one has issues understanding, so why the pedantic nitpicking?
- karatestomp 6y agoI'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.
- true_religion 6y ago
- Jommi 6y agoYeah I thought this article would be about companies that just barely make back their marketing spend, but then in the long-term reach success from being big/getting brand value.
- karmakaze 6y agoYes the math does not support the metaphor. This is the kind of thing that would irk me but I'm fine with this one. I imagine a massive flywheel where each input imperceptibly changes angular velocity and in early stages is moving in slow motion like a joke. Keep at it and it becomes an unstoppable beast (neglecting friction of course). This is content marketing. Nothing until it's something.