At the inaugural Digital Marketing Forum last week, Customer Devoted founder James Sandberg tackled the complex world of lead generation. Hosting a talk entitled ‘Lead generation – sales funnels have morphed into flywheels’, he assessed how data and automation are disrupting traditional lead generation into online businesses.
Sandberg’s background?
“I’ve had a bit of a mixed career, working across customer loyalty, CRM, a little bit of PR, and I also worked in customer acquisition in performance marketing for financial services brands,” he explained. “So some of the most competitive and aggressive industries in terms of driving costs down.”
The rise of omnichannel
“The world has gone omnichannel, so customers are expecting to be understood, heard and connected with – across all channels and at all times. This is the rise of the omnichannel era.
“If you imagine, five to eight years ago, we were operating all channels on a separate basis, we had separate rules in terms of how people were going to run those channels, how they were going to look, how they were going to feel, and much of this stuff would be run by different people.”
Flywheels
Sandberg opened up by asking the audience if anyone has heard of or is operating a funnel in their marketing strategy.
“And who has heard of a flywheel, in marketing terms?” Sandberg continued. “Not the Amazon flywheel – that’s been out for a while. The new flywheel model to connect your customer loyalty and customer lifetime value in with your funnel is what I’ll be talking about. Flywheels connect everything up.”
A marketing flywheel keeps the tactics focused on a single measurable goal. It forces you and your organisation to keep a single purpose in mind as they develop tactics.
The momentum of a flywheel is determined by three primary pieces:
- The weight of the wheel
- How fast you spin it
- The friction.
Affiverse CEO Lee-Ann Johnstone will be hosting an ‘Affiliate Marketing Masterclass’ at the inaugural Betting on Sports America conference next month. Find out more information here.
