For years, the marketing funnel has dominated strategic thinking around customer acquisition. It’s a clear, step-by-step framework that has guided countless brands in attracting leads, nurturing them, and driving conversions. Marketers favor it for its simplicity and structure. But consumer behavior is evolving—and fast.
Enter the flywheel: a model centered not on closing the sale, but on maintaining momentum and placing the customer at the core of a continuously spinning cycle. As buying journeys become more complex and nonlinear, this customer-centric approach is gaining traction. The debate between the funnel and the flywheel isn’t just theoretical anymore—it’s transforming how brands design and execute paid advertising campaigns.
So, how do these two models compare? More importantly, which one should your business lean on when it comes to growing, scaling, and sustaining success?
The Funnel: Structured, Predictable, and Focused on Conversion
The funnel is beloved for its clarity. It organizes customer behavior into logical phases—awareness, interest, consideration, and conversion. These stages make it easy for marketers to build targeted campaigns based on where a user is in their journey.
In a funnel-driven strategy, paid ads are designed with precision:
- Top-of-funnel (ToFu) campaigns target users with broad interests using general messaging, often through display ads or video.
- Middle-of-funnel (MoFu) efforts serve more personalized content to prospects already showing interest—retargeting ads, gated content, and product demos.
- Bottom-of-funnel (BoFu) campaigns drive action: limited-time offers, reviews, and strong calls-to-action close the sale.
This segmentation allows brands to monitor performance at each stage, tweak messaging, and allocate budgets effectively. Marketers can double down on what works and quickly pull away from what doesn’t.
However, the funnel comes with limitations. It views the customer journey as linear and ends at the point of purchase. There’s little to no consideration for the post-sale experience—what happens after someone becomes a customer. For businesses where repeat engagement, long-term loyalty, or referrals matter, this model leaves significant value untapped.
Where Funnels Fall Short in Modern Advertising
Modern consumers don’t behave in straight lines. They read reviews, bounce between platforms, follow influencers, abandon carts, and revisit websites days or even weeks later. The funnel struggles to accommodate this erratic yet very real behavior.
Moreover, acquisition costs are climbing across paid advertising platforms. A model that only focuses on bringing new people in, without maximizing the value of existing customers, becomes increasingly inefficient over time.
In businesses offering recurring services—such as digital subscriptions, learning platforms, or even professional SEO services—the first sale is just the beginning. Retaining customers, encouraging referrals, and turning buyers into advocates becomes essential. Here’s where the funnel shows its age.
The Flywheel: Continuous Growth Through Customer-Centricity
The flywheel is built around a simple idea: happy customers fuel business growth. It’s a circular model with three core motions—attract, engage, delight—and unlike the funnel, it never really ends. The energy from one satisfied customer feeds into the next.
Rather than treating conversion as the finish line, the flywheel sees it as a momentum-builder. It reflects how real-world trust and advocacy work: people listen to other people. Reviews, recommendations, social proof, and community engagement carry more weight than polished sales copy ever will.
From a paid advertising standpoint, flywheel strategies don’t stop once someone buys. They continue nurturing customers with tailored content, loyalty incentives, and post-sale support that turns them into enthusiastic brand promoters. Advertising under this model isn’t just about making the sale—it’s about creating experiences that deepen relationships.
Examples include:
- Running post-purchase ads that feature how-to videos for the product.
- Encouraging customers to share unboxing content via paid social prompts.
- Creating retargeting campaigns that promote referral bonuses.
- Using dynamic ads to recommend complementary products based on purchase history.
By continuously engaging customers, flywheel marketing lowers churn and increases customer lifetime value. It also reduces reliance on cold acquisition, which is both expensive and often less effective.
Paid Advertising Through the Funnel Lens: Still Relevant, Still Effective
Despite its drawbacks, the funnel isn’t obsolete. It remains extremely useful for certain goals, especially short-term growth and lead generation. Platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, and Instagram are built with funnel mechanics in mind. Campaign objectives are often labeled according to funnel stages: awareness, consideration, and conversion.
With tools like customer journey mapping and sequential retargeting, funnel-based campaigns can be highly effective when executed correctly. For example, a brand might serve a video ad to build awareness, follow it up with a carousel featuring product benefits, and then retarget users who clicked through with a promotional offer.
The precision of this structure is attractive to marketers focused on measurable returns. Metrics like click-through rate (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC), and return on ad spend (ROAS) allow for tight control over performance.
However, what happens after the conversion? If the brand doesn’t invest in ongoing engagement, the relationship can fade. That’s a critical gap, especially for companies in service industries or subscription models where ongoing value is where profit lies.
Paid Advertising in the Flywheel Framework: Building Relationships, Not Just Reach
When paid ads are used within a flywheel strategy, they take on a new role: relationship-building. Instead of just focusing on first-touch conversions, they support a wide array of customer touchpoints throughout the lifecycle.
For example:
- Email list growth becomes a paid priority, not for blasting sales messages but for nurturing educational content.
- Customer spotlight videos, testimonials, and reviews are promoted to build trust—not just awareness.
- Long-form retargeting campaigns serve existing customers with new product updates or personalized offers.
- Paid polls or interactive ads solicit customer feedback that can improve products and experiences.
This shift is powerful. It creates an ecosystem where every paid touchpoint contributes not just to sales, but to the broader experience. For businesses offering SEO services, this could mean serving ads that showcase client results, offering free tools, or even inviting customers to share success stories on video.
What’s different is the mindset: instead of asking, “How can we convert this lead?” the question becomes, “How can we keep this person excited about our brand over time?”
Combining Both Models: A Hybrid Approach
In reality, many businesses are finding success by combining both models. They use the funnel to attract and convert new leads and the flywheel to retain, delight, and grow relationships. The two are not mutually exclusive. When integrated thoughtfully, they can create a seamless customer journey from first click to long-term loyalty.
Here’s what that might look like:
- Top-of-funnel campaigns bring awareness to a service.
- Mid-funnel efforts educate through ads featuring case studies or webinars.
- Bottom-of-funnel promotions offer time-sensitive discounts or free consultations.
- Post-conversion flywheel ads keep the conversation going:
- Ask for a review.
- Show what’s next in their customer journey.
- Encourage social sharing or referrals.
- Offer exclusive content to deepen brand trust.
In this hybrid model, paid advertising doesn’t end with the sale—it evolves with the customer. That makes each advertising dollar go further, compounding value over time.
What Metrics Matter Most?
Choosing between the funnel and flywheel doesn’t just affect campaign structure—it changes how you measure success.
Funnel-based campaigns typically focus on:
- Cost per lead (CPL)
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Conversion rate
- ROAS (return on ad spend)
Flywheel-based campaigns, however, look beyond initial clicks:
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Net promoter score (NPS)
- Retention and renewal rates
- Referral traffic
- User-generated content and social mentions
By shifting your lens, you also shift your priorities. Funnel metrics can show efficiency in acquisition. Flywheel metrics tell you whether you’re building a brand people care about and come back to.
How Paid Platforms Are Adapting
Even the platforms themselves are changing to reflect more customer-centric approaches. Google’s Performance Max campaigns now combine multiple inventory types—search, display, YouTube—to deliver ads dynamically across the journey. Meta’s Advantage+ campaigns simplify automation and support personalized targeting across the entire lifecycle.
This move toward automation and behavior-based delivery aligns more closely with the flywheel. These platforms recognize that consumers don’t move in straight lines. They need to be engaged in different ways, at different times, based on real-world signals.
For marketers, this is an opportunity. Embracing these evolving capabilities enables smarter, more contextual advertising—especially in industries where relationships and retention drive value.
Final Thoughts: A Model is Only as Good as Its Execution
The funnel and flywheel aren’t opposing camps—they’re tools. What matters more is how they’re applied. Businesses that understand their audience, product lifecycle, and strategic goals can build highly effective paid advertising campaigns using either model—or both in tandem.
The funnel still has its place, especially for new businesses or product launches. The flywheel excels when loyalty, advocacy, and lifetime value matter most. Brands offering SEO services often benefit from a flywheel mindset, where long-term partnerships and customer satisfaction fuel continued growth.
What unites both models is the need for relevance, empathy, and intention. Customers are more informed, more selective, and more vocal than ever before. Whether you’re guiding them down a funnel or pulling them into a flywheel, the brands that win will be the ones that listen, adapt, and keep delivering value—long after the first click.
