What Arts Marketers Can Learn From B2B Marketing

The funnel is dead. Long live the funnel.

I’d guess that you probably use the concept of a funnel when you’re building marketing campaigns and strategies at your organization. It’s a tried and true and easy-to-understand concept. You start with potential ticket buyers at the top of the funnel and try to move them through to the bottom of the funnel and a ticket purchase.

But recently, B2B (Business-to-Business) marketers have been ditching the marketing funnel in favor of a newer concept: the marketing flywheel. We think that it’s time for arts marketers to take a page out of the B2B marketing playbook and adopt the flywheel at their organizations.

A flywheel is a mechanical device, typically used in engines. Fundamentally, flywheels store energy. It requires energy input to make the flywheel spin, but once it starts spinning, it is designed to keep spinning.

If we think about our business like a flywheel, the forces we apply to get the wheel spinning are our various campaigns and initiatives. And the energy that’s built up are the sales that you make—or, in even more general terms, the growth of your business.

There are many good resources online to learn about the marketing flywheel; HubSpot provides an excellent explanation of the flywheel and why B2B marketers should consider it. (Their co-founder and executive chairperson Brian Halligan has been a leading voice in promoting and popularizing this concept.) To grossly oversimplify, think of the traditional marketing funnel wrapping around on itself and becoming a circle.

The flywheel is a powerful concept because it frames your business as a cycle, rather than a straight line, as the traditional marketing funnel does. Instead of dropping a customer at the bottom of the funnel and having to bring them back to the top as we try to sell them another ticket, the flywheel considers instead building on the momentum of their first purchase and their first time attending a performance at your organization. And we know this is how our sales cycles work! Patrons will see advertisements for upcoming performances when they’re at your venue to see a show, and they’re already thinking about what they might want to attend next. Your subscribers make their decision about whether to return the following year based upon their experience of attending during the current season. The process is inherently cyclical, and the flywheel acknowledges that.

The flywheel also places your customers at the center of your marketing considerations, rather than considering them as an outcome. Just as an audience is an essential component of a performance, not a passive byproduct, our customers are an essential component of what we’re marketing. We need to consider that. We should become obsessed with their experiences interacting with our organizations. Positive interactions make it more likely that our customers are going to want to return and spin our flywheels even faster, while negative interactions are going to add friction and slow down our flywheels. You should be thinking about the ways that your audience—and not just your marketing team—can affect your flywheel. As anyone who’s seen ticket sales take off thanks to strong word-of-mouth reviews knows, your customers can play a major role in your organization’s success!

Finally, we have also been drawn to the flywheel model because it takes your product itself into consideration. The marketing funnel ends when a patron purchases a ticket, whereas the flywheel considers a customer’s whole experience with your organization. Someone’s interaction with your organization doesn’t end when they buy a ticket; in fact, it’s only just begun once they buy a ticket! The essential “Delight” phase of your flywheel considers that extremely important experience that customers have when they actually walk through your doors. Many marketers might overlook this stage of the customer journey, but it’s important to remember that every piece of their experience affects their overall perception of your organization. With the flywheel, you have a strong reminder to consider the patron’s whole experience.

So, how can you use the flywheel at your organization? Start thinking about the marketing forces that you’re applying to your flywheel! Where are you applying energy? Where do you see friction, and can you remove it so your flywheel can spin faster?

Here’s an example of how some of your marketing efforts might be applied to a flywheel. This theoretical organization is applying forces to their flywheel in a fairly balanced way. But we think you may discover some areas where you may need to apply more forces.

We encourage you to think about this framework and how you could apply it to your organization. We’ll be continuing to share our thoughts about how this B2B framework can be applied to arts marketing, and we’d love to hear your thoughts and how thinking about spinning your flywheel has helped your organization.

Let’s spin your flywheel together!

JCA is your trusted partner to help you leverage your data to spin your flywheel faster and build a stronger future for your organization. Our seasoned performing arts consultants have the industry knowledge, experience, and tools to advance your marketing initiatives. From campaign planning to interim staffing support, our team can help you leverage your data to increase revenue, boost attendance, and grow patron value.