I love the Flywheel analogy. Conceived and popularized by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great as well as other big thinkers like Hubspot Founder Brian Halligan, it’s the logical replacement of the traditional marketing funnel concept.

A flywheel is a heavy revolving wheel in (or alongside) a machine that is used to increase the machine’s momentum, providing greater sustainability and a reserve of available power during interruptions in the delivery of power. The flywheel is held in place by a shaft. It takes a lot of energy to get a flywheel started rotating, but once it is in motion, the momentum keeps the flywheel spinning. So, it also takes energy (or loss of energy) for the flywheel to slow down.

And just as an aside, one of my favorite examples of a flywheel in action is their use in conjunction with large container cranes. Check out this video describing how the utility company serving Kodiak, Alaska uses a flywheel to balance electrical loads in the island community (the description of the flywheels’ part in their system begins at about the 4-minute mark).

A brand flywheel provides an organization stability and helps the sales team (or development team) maintain their rate of sales or donations with less effort, as the flywheel gathers more momentum. It takes a concerted, team-wide effort where everyone is pushing to create and maintain the momentum. And most importantly, the main objective is to keep your ideal customer in mind throughout the process. Then it just becomes wash, rinse, repeat.

The Brand Flywheel takes advantage of the following features:

• Your Mission and Message,
• Grounding Yourself,
• Telling Your Story,
• Capturing Business,
• Delighting and Inspiring, and
• Engaging Your Stakeholders.

I’ll be delving into more details of each of these features in following posts.