Why Funnels Are Not Enough For B2B SaaS Flywheel Content Marketing
Why Funnels Are Not Enough For B2B SaaS Flywheel Content Marketing
Recently, I assisted a small SaaS team with their content marketing structure. Like many early stage startups, they mainly focused on growth at the TOFU stage like running LinkedIn ads, publishing blogs, and cold outreach. Leads were coming in. But then, almost a month later, their CEO said, Why does it feel like the day someone signs up is the last day we have momentum? That conversation captured a distinct SaaS marketing problem for me. That is, the traditional funnel works very hard at acquiring customers and does very little to support what comes next: onboarding, retention, expansion, or advocacy. It is a one-way path where the customer is not a potential growth engine rather the end game. The flywheel model changes all of that.
What Is the B2B SaaS Content Marketing Flywheel?
B2B SaaS content marketing flywheel is a self-sustaining, customer-powered loop where every interaction you have with your customers (reading a blog, using your product, or referring a friend) creates more momentum for the next one.
The flywheel idea originates from physics.
As once a flywheel has inertia, it becomes easier and easier to keep it spinning.
In marketing, that means generating compound returns from happy customers who praise it, return to it, and call their friends to it.
These customers grow the business beyond the level of growth they received when they were acquired.
HubSpot popularized this concept when they started to realize their traditional funnel was only focusing on closing a deal vs retaining them as a customer.
HubSpot then expanded their Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) once they reorganized the entire business around the flywheel.
Even Amazon grew their entire business on flywheel logic by building a growth loop once a customer interacts with them instead of a closed loop.
According to Forbes, “companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards by nearly 80%.”
In a SaaS world, growth means how many people can find you, and who stays and shares you.
The content marketing flywheel is more than a model, it is a mindset shift.
Funnel vs. Flywheel: Why the Shift Matters
Funnel ruled SaaS marketing for years, where customers were treated as the endpoint but the flywheel flipped that thinking by turning customers into promoters.
Here is the difference between the two content marketing models:
Aspect | Funnel (Old) | Flywheel (New) |
Shape | Linear, top-down | Circular, continuous |
Focus | Acquisition | Retention + Advocacy |
Customer Role | Output | Input + Accelerator |
Weak Point | Post-sale drop-off | Post-sale engagement |
Nowadays in SaaS, growth is considered more than just acquisition.
Retention is involved when customers are viewed as long-term momentum instead of simply the destination of an action.
Stages of the Flywheel and the Role of Content
57% of marketers say that they struggle to create content for each stage of the marketing journey.
When constructing a flywheel for B2B SaaS, there is more to strategy than just the number of assets.
Each stage of the flywheel involves a strategic mindset which builds acceleration, with content as the sustenance for the flywheel.
1. Attract
At this stage, your content is the magnet.
Think of SEO focused blog posts, infographics and top-of-funnel resources that address real problems your audience searches for on Google.
A functioning flywheel earns trust not just clicks, so here content is bringing your flywheel to life when it starts to address a pain point.
It is your first push to start building momentum when your blog gets the wheels turning.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Organic traffic
Bounce rate
SERP position
These metrics show whether your content is attracting the right people that are making them stick around.
2. Engage
Now your visitor is leaning in.
And they are looking to self-educate which is the middle-of-funnel content, that includes webinars, product comparison guides, and downloadable ebooks.
This is where you need clarity and alignment and the more value you give post-audience with a water-marked piece of content, means the stronger your leads will be.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Time on page
Lead quality score
Click through rate
These measures help you see if your content is driving interest, trust and meaningful next steps.
3. Delight
Most funnels stop after post-sale, but the flywheel engages.
Content from the delight stage can include onboarding walkthroughs, feature tutorials, and support newsletters.
Now, this is where product education meets retention and every lead moment reinforces loyalty.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Feature adoption rate
Customer-satisfaction score
These metrics show whether your content is turning customers into confident, loyal users who in turn become your biggest advocates.
4. Advocate
Your happiest users become your best marketers.
You can generate multiple effects by producing case studies, curating reviews, and encouraging posts in the community.
HubSpot discovered that Customer Acquisition Costs were reduced by 50% by turning customers into advocates.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Referral rate
Social shares
Testimonials collected
These metrics show how your brand is trusted enough that customers want to give a shout out about it for you.
Overcoming Challenges in Building a Content Flywheel
Establishing a content flywheel is more than just creating more content.
It's a system that operates across teams, tools, and touchpoints.
Here are some of the most frequent barriers to SaaS marketers, and their solutions:
1. Content Silos Between Teams
The problem: Repetition, inconsistencies and gaps arise from generating content independently from the marketing, sales and customer success teams.
The solution: Implement a content ops model that is cross-functional.
Your team should know what content has already been created and where it fits in.
To assist with this, provide a content calendar, recurring syncs, and messaging guidelines to your team.
Thus, your content is part of an ecosystem and not trapped in silos, where the value of your content increases.
2. Inability to Attenuate
The problem: You are publishing content without being able to determine what is actually driving leads, conversions, or expansion.
The solution: To track measures across the funnel, plug in UTMs (Urchin Tracking Modules), your CRM tools, and attribution platforms like HubSpot.
You cannot iterate on what works, and spin the flywheel quicker, without visibility.
3. Goal Misalignment Across Teams
The problem: Customer success wants to fight churn, sales have to work on quotas and marketing works on Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).
The flywheel slows down, when your marketing goals don’t align.
The solution: Use retention, activation, and advocacy measures to define shared KPIs via metrics like NPS, product usage rate, and expansion revenue.
When goals align, each team contributes momentum to keep the wheel turning.
4. No staged content approach
The problem: Content fails to engage users at different stages of the journey when it's made for all users at once.
The solution: Create a content map by aligning with the flywheel process where each stage should have its own range, tone, and metrics.
The best flywheel takes content for moments, not just for personas.
Measuring Flywheel Success in SaaS
The true beauty of a flywheel content marketing strategy is how it builds compounding growth, rather than just short-term wins.
But then, how can we tell if that flywheel is actually spinning?
Here's a list of why measuring metrics matter, and a few tools for defining that flywheel in action:
1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Why it matters: Measures the likelihood of product recommendation by customers.
In a flywheel model, promoters are much more than just happy customers; they are growth drivers.
Make sure you measure NPS often, especially after major content engagement events like webinars or onboarding.
You can automate your NPS surveys using Hotjar or Hubspot.
2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Why it matters: Measures the amount of money a customer will make your company over the length of their customer relationship.
A flywheel model focuses on the long-term value of a customer and not just the first conversion.
Look at CLTV along with data from content engagement to determine which content formats improve retention.
You can measure lifetime value using Mixpanel or ProfitWell.
3. Retention and Churn Rate
Why it matters: If your content is delighting users beyond the sale, they will stay.
If it isn’t, they will churn.
Map retention curves against engagement with external educational content like product tours.
You can use Segment or Amplitude for behavioral retention tracking.
4. Content-Assisted Conversions
Why it matters: Measure how many of those conversions were assisted by your content touchpoints.
You can use content attribution to prove some kind of ROI, and to optimize the customer journey.
Dreamdata and HubSpot are great platforms to map multi-touch attribution for content.
5. Content Velocity
Why it matters: Measures the volume × consistency × quality of your content outputs.
A constant rhythm fuels the flywheel better than an occasional spike.
You can measure content cadence with metrics such as SERP rankings, organic traffic lifts, and publishing cadence.
And you can visualize this with Supermetrics in Google Data Studio.
6. Advocacy Metrics (Referrals, Reviews, Social Shares)
Why it matters: Advocacy is the multiplier of the flywheel.
If people are talking, then your content is working.
So, obtain testimonials through exit surveys, or trigger reviews after successful support interactions, or both.
You can use Typeform or G2 to collect and track.
Real-World Example: Dub’s Flywheel in Action
When Steven Tey created Dub, he did not just create a product, he created a mechanism for momentum.
Instead of focusing solely on acquisition, Dub has led a self-sustaining loop among product updates, product onboarding tutorials, and social-oriented trust as a direct-to-consumer product.
Dub's onboarding Help Center and detailed developer docs were not just support content but levers to activate and reduce churn before it happens.
Steven relied on his audience on Twitter and LinkedIn to spread updates and questions or feedback based on those updates, creating a community-loop.
This began to flesh-out in the form of trust and eventually, users.
Maybe the best move was going freemium.
That decision invited thousands of users into the ecosystem, creating an accelerated viral loop growth as word-of-mouth momentum replaced usual CAC-heavy efforts.
Tips to Build a Strong Flywheel
Many SaaS teams profess they want sustainable growth, but few actually build systems that allow it to happen.
The flywheel model offers such potential, including sustainable growth, but only if you fundamentally rethink how your content operates.
Here’s what we learned as we built our flywheel, and what the best are doing in SaaS.
1. Invest in Compounding Content
We used to create ad hoc content stunts- LinkedIn posts for content spikes, short-lived lead magnets to generate opportunities.
Then, we doubled down on evergreen SEO and community-driven posts, and the long-term gains compounded.
This is the core engine of the flywheel where content grows in value over time and creates trust beyond the click.
2. Combine SEO and Product Education
The best content ranks and teaches.
There should be no need to choose between blog traffic or how-to's on your product. Use both.
3. Measure Advocacy and Activation
Activation and advocacy are the flywheel's fastest accelerators.
Shifting your measurement metrics to track NPS and feature adoption, not just traffic or downloads is when content finally starts to feel tied to growth.
HubSpot demonstrated this through their advocacy-focused users who helped cut CAC by up to 50%.
4. Be Intentional About Repurposing Across Stages
One customer story became a blog, then a case study, then social proof in a drip campaign.
It is important to map the different pieces of content across the different points in the journey, not just post it then forget about it.
Always ask yourself, "Where else can this content live in the flywheel?"
5. Make Content Cross-Functional by Default
For customer support, you can use blog content in response to help tickets, which helps reduce churn.
As for sales, you can use onboarding guides as a demo tool which increases conversion rates.
Content should not be siloed, rather used as a tool for sales, product and even recruiting.
Thus, when you start applying all of these principles, your content stops being a chore and starts becoming a growth engine.
Final Thoughts
In the B2B SaaS industry, sustainable growth is not generated through one-off wins rather it is created by building momentum.
The flywheel model allows you to shift from acquiring leads to creating long-lasting customer relationships.
After all, when your content works for the complete customer journey, from “attract to advocate”, it stops being marketing and starts driving real business outcomes.
At Rank Wizards, we help SaaS teams turn their content into a strategically mapped, SEO enabled, and advocacy ready to be published.
If you want your content to work harder for you across the full customer journey, let's spin it.
What Is the B2B SaaS Content Marketing Flywheel?
B2B SaaS content marketing flywheel is a self-sustaining, customer-powered loop where every interaction you have with your customers (reading a blog, using your product, or referring a friend) creates more momentum for the next one.
The flywheel idea originates from physics.
As once a flywheel has inertia, it becomes easier and easier to keep it spinning.
In marketing, that means generating compound returns from happy customers who praise it, return to it, and call their friends to it.
These customers grow the business beyond the level of growth they received when they were acquired.
HubSpot popularized this concept when they started to realize their traditional funnel was only focusing on closing a deal vs retaining them as a customer.
HubSpot then expanded their Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) once they reorganized the entire business around the flywheel.
Even Amazon grew their entire business on flywheel logic by building a growth loop once a customer interacts with them instead of a closed loop.
According to Forbes, “companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards by nearly 80%.”
In a SaaS world, growth means how many people can find you, and who stays and shares you.
The content marketing flywheel is more than a model, it is a mindset shift.
Funnel vs. Flywheel: Why the Shift Matters
Funnel ruled SaaS marketing for years, where customers were treated as the endpoint but the flywheel flipped that thinking by turning customers into promoters.
Here is the difference between the two content marketing models:
Aspect | Funnel (Old) | Flywheel (New) |
Shape | Linear, top-down | Circular, continuous |
Focus | Acquisition | Retention + Advocacy |
Customer Role | Output | Input + Accelerator |
Weak Point | Post-sale drop-off | Post-sale engagement |
Nowadays in SaaS, growth is considered more than just acquisition.
Retention is involved when customers are viewed as long-term momentum instead of simply the destination of an action.
Stages of the Flywheel and the Role of Content
57% of marketers say that they struggle to create content for each stage of the marketing journey.
When constructing a flywheel for B2B SaaS, there is more to strategy than just the number of assets.
Each stage of the flywheel involves a strategic mindset which builds acceleration, with content as the sustenance for the flywheel.
1. Attract
At this stage, your content is the magnet.
Think of SEO focused blog posts, infographics and top-of-funnel resources that address real problems your audience searches for on Google.
A functioning flywheel earns trust not just clicks, so here content is bringing your flywheel to life when it starts to address a pain point.
It is your first push to start building momentum when your blog gets the wheels turning.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Organic traffic
Bounce rate
SERP position
These metrics show whether your content is attracting the right people that are making them stick around.
2. Engage
Now your visitor is leaning in.
And they are looking to self-educate which is the middle-of-funnel content, that includes webinars, product comparison guides, and downloadable ebooks.
This is where you need clarity and alignment and the more value you give post-audience with a water-marked piece of content, means the stronger your leads will be.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Time on page
Lead quality score
Click through rate
These measures help you see if your content is driving interest, trust and meaningful next steps.
3. Delight
Most funnels stop after post-sale, but the flywheel engages.
Content from the delight stage can include onboarding walkthroughs, feature tutorials, and support newsletters.
Now, this is where product education meets retention and every lead moment reinforces loyalty.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Feature adoption rate
Customer-satisfaction score
These metrics show whether your content is turning customers into confident, loyal users who in turn become your biggest advocates.
4. Advocate
Your happiest users become your best marketers.
You can generate multiple effects by producing case studies, curating reviews, and encouraging posts in the community.
HubSpot discovered that Customer Acquisition Costs were reduced by 50% by turning customers into advocates.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Referral rate
Social shares
Testimonials collected
These metrics show how your brand is trusted enough that customers want to give a shout out about it for you.
Overcoming Challenges in Building a Content Flywheel
Establishing a content flywheel is more than just creating more content.
It's a system that operates across teams, tools, and touchpoints.
Here are some of the most frequent barriers to SaaS marketers, and their solutions:
1. Content Silos Between Teams
The problem: Repetition, inconsistencies and gaps arise from generating content independently from the marketing, sales and customer success teams.
The solution: Implement a content ops model that is cross-functional.
Your team should know what content has already been created and where it fits in.
To assist with this, provide a content calendar, recurring syncs, and messaging guidelines to your team.
Thus, your content is part of an ecosystem and not trapped in silos, where the value of your content increases.
2. Inability to Attenuate
The problem: You are publishing content without being able to determine what is actually driving leads, conversions, or expansion.
The solution: To track measures across the funnel, plug in UTMs (Urchin Tracking Modules), your CRM tools, and attribution platforms like HubSpot.
You cannot iterate on what works, and spin the flywheel quicker, without visibility.
3. Goal Misalignment Across Teams
The problem: Customer success wants to fight churn, sales have to work on quotas and marketing works on Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).
The flywheel slows down, when your marketing goals don’t align.
The solution: Use retention, activation, and advocacy measures to define shared KPIs via metrics like NPS, product usage rate, and expansion revenue.
When goals align, each team contributes momentum to keep the wheel turning.
4. No staged content approach
The problem: Content fails to engage users at different stages of the journey when it's made for all users at once.
The solution: Create a content map by aligning with the flywheel process where each stage should have its own range, tone, and metrics.
The best flywheel takes content for moments, not just for personas.
Measuring Flywheel Success in SaaS
The true beauty of a flywheel content marketing strategy is how it builds compounding growth, rather than just short-term wins.
But then, how can we tell if that flywheel is actually spinning?
Here's a list of why measuring metrics matter, and a few tools for defining that flywheel in action:
1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Why it matters: Measures the likelihood of product recommendation by customers.
In a flywheel model, promoters are much more than just happy customers; they are growth drivers.
Make sure you measure NPS often, especially after major content engagement events like webinars or onboarding.
You can automate your NPS surveys using Hotjar or Hubspot.
2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Why it matters: Measures the amount of money a customer will make your company over the length of their customer relationship.
A flywheel model focuses on the long-term value of a customer and not just the first conversion.
Look at CLTV along with data from content engagement to determine which content formats improve retention.
You can measure lifetime value using Mixpanel or ProfitWell.
3. Retention and Churn Rate
Why it matters: If your content is delighting users beyond the sale, they will stay.
If it isn’t, they will churn.
Map retention curves against engagement with external educational content like product tours.
You can use Segment or Amplitude for behavioral retention tracking.
4. Content-Assisted Conversions
Why it matters: Measure how many of those conversions were assisted by your content touchpoints.
You can use content attribution to prove some kind of ROI, and to optimize the customer journey.
Dreamdata and HubSpot are great platforms to map multi-touch attribution for content.
5. Content Velocity
Why it matters: Measures the volume × consistency × quality of your content outputs.
A constant rhythm fuels the flywheel better than an occasional spike.
You can measure content cadence with metrics such as SERP rankings, organic traffic lifts, and publishing cadence.
And you can visualize this with Supermetrics in Google Data Studio.
6. Advocacy Metrics (Referrals, Reviews, Social Shares)
Why it matters: Advocacy is the multiplier of the flywheel.
If people are talking, then your content is working.
So, obtain testimonials through exit surveys, or trigger reviews after successful support interactions, or both.
You can use Typeform or G2 to collect and track.
Real-World Example: Dub’s Flywheel in Action
When Steven Tey created Dub, he did not just create a product, he created a mechanism for momentum.
Instead of focusing solely on acquisition, Dub has led a self-sustaining loop among product updates, product onboarding tutorials, and social-oriented trust as a direct-to-consumer product.
Dub's onboarding Help Center and detailed developer docs were not just support content but levers to activate and reduce churn before it happens.
Steven relied on his audience on Twitter and LinkedIn to spread updates and questions or feedback based on those updates, creating a community-loop.
This began to flesh-out in the form of trust and eventually, users.
Maybe the best move was going freemium.
That decision invited thousands of users into the ecosystem, creating an accelerated viral loop growth as word-of-mouth momentum replaced usual CAC-heavy efforts.
Tips to Build a Strong Flywheel
Many SaaS teams profess they want sustainable growth, but few actually build systems that allow it to happen.
The flywheel model offers such potential, including sustainable growth, but only if you fundamentally rethink how your content operates.
Here’s what we learned as we built our flywheel, and what the best are doing in SaaS.
1. Invest in Compounding Content
We used to create ad hoc content stunts- LinkedIn posts for content spikes, short-lived lead magnets to generate opportunities.
Then, we doubled down on evergreen SEO and community-driven posts, and the long-term gains compounded.
This is the core engine of the flywheel where content grows in value over time and creates trust beyond the click.
2. Combine SEO and Product Education
The best content ranks and teaches.
There should be no need to choose between blog traffic or how-to's on your product. Use both.
3. Measure Advocacy and Activation
Activation and advocacy are the flywheel's fastest accelerators.
Shifting your measurement metrics to track NPS and feature adoption, not just traffic or downloads is when content finally starts to feel tied to growth.
HubSpot demonstrated this through their advocacy-focused users who helped cut CAC by up to 50%.
4. Be Intentional About Repurposing Across Stages
One customer story became a blog, then a case study, then social proof in a drip campaign.
It is important to map the different pieces of content across the different points in the journey, not just post it then forget about it.
Always ask yourself, "Where else can this content live in the flywheel?"
5. Make Content Cross-Functional by Default
For customer support, you can use blog content in response to help tickets, which helps reduce churn.
As for sales, you can use onboarding guides as a demo tool which increases conversion rates.
Content should not be siloed, rather used as a tool for sales, product and even recruiting.
Thus, when you start applying all of these principles, your content stops being a chore and starts becoming a growth engine.
Final Thoughts
In the B2B SaaS industry, sustainable growth is not generated through one-off wins rather it is created by building momentum.
The flywheel model allows you to shift from acquiring leads to creating long-lasting customer relationships.
After all, when your content works for the complete customer journey, from “attract to advocate”, it stops being marketing and starts driving real business outcomes.
At Rank Wizards, we help SaaS teams turn their content into a strategically mapped, SEO enabled, and advocacy ready to be published.
If you want your content to work harder for you across the full customer journey, let's spin it.
Recently, I assisted a small SaaS team with their content marketing structure. Like many early stage startups, they mainly focused on growth at the TOFU stage like running LinkedIn ads, publishing blogs, and cold outreach. Leads were coming in. But then, almost a month later, their CEO said, Why does it feel like the day someone signs up is the last day we have momentum? That conversation captured a distinct SaaS marketing problem for me. That is, the traditional funnel works very hard at acquiring customers and does very little to support what comes next: onboarding, retention, expansion, or advocacy. It is a one-way path where the customer is not a potential growth engine rather the end game. The flywheel model changes all of that.
What Is the B2B SaaS Content Marketing Flywheel?
B2B SaaS content marketing flywheel is a self-sustaining, customer-powered loop where every interaction you have with your customers (reading a blog, using your product, or referring a friend) creates more momentum for the next one.
The flywheel idea originates from physics.
As once a flywheel has inertia, it becomes easier and easier to keep it spinning.
In marketing, that means generating compound returns from happy customers who praise it, return to it, and call their friends to it.
These customers grow the business beyond the level of growth they received when they were acquired.
HubSpot popularized this concept when they started to realize their traditional funnel was only focusing on closing a deal vs retaining them as a customer.
HubSpot then expanded their Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) once they reorganized the entire business around the flywheel.
Even Amazon grew their entire business on flywheel logic by building a growth loop once a customer interacts with them instead of a closed loop.
According to Forbes, “companies that lead in customer experience outperform laggards by nearly 80%.”
In a SaaS world, growth means how many people can find you, and who stays and shares you.
The content marketing flywheel is more than a model, it is a mindset shift.
Funnel vs. Flywheel: Why the Shift Matters
Funnel ruled SaaS marketing for years, where customers were treated as the endpoint but the flywheel flipped that thinking by turning customers into promoters.
Here is the difference between the two content marketing models:
Aspect | Funnel (Old) | Flywheel (New) |
Shape | Linear, top-down | Circular, continuous |
Focus | Acquisition | Retention + Advocacy |
Customer Role | Output | Input + Accelerator |
Weak Point | Post-sale drop-off | Post-sale engagement |
Nowadays in SaaS, growth is considered more than just acquisition.
Retention is involved when customers are viewed as long-term momentum instead of simply the destination of an action.
Stages of the Flywheel and the Role of Content
57% of marketers say that they struggle to create content for each stage of the marketing journey.
When constructing a flywheel for B2B SaaS, there is more to strategy than just the number of assets.
Each stage of the flywheel involves a strategic mindset which builds acceleration, with content as the sustenance for the flywheel.
1. Attract
At this stage, your content is the magnet.
Think of SEO focused blog posts, infographics and top-of-funnel resources that address real problems your audience searches for on Google.
A functioning flywheel earns trust not just clicks, so here content is bringing your flywheel to life when it starts to address a pain point.
It is your first push to start building momentum when your blog gets the wheels turning.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Organic traffic
Bounce rate
SERP position
These metrics show whether your content is attracting the right people that are making them stick around.
2. Engage
Now your visitor is leaning in.
And they are looking to self-educate which is the middle-of-funnel content, that includes webinars, product comparison guides, and downloadable ebooks.
This is where you need clarity and alignment and the more value you give post-audience with a water-marked piece of content, means the stronger your leads will be.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Time on page
Lead quality score
Click through rate
These measures help you see if your content is driving interest, trust and meaningful next steps.
3. Delight
Most funnels stop after post-sale, but the flywheel engages.
Content from the delight stage can include onboarding walkthroughs, feature tutorials, and support newsletters.
Now, this is where product education meets retention and every lead moment reinforces loyalty.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Feature adoption rate
Customer-satisfaction score
These metrics show whether your content is turning customers into confident, loyal users who in turn become your biggest advocates.
4. Advocate
Your happiest users become your best marketers.
You can generate multiple effects by producing case studies, curating reviews, and encouraging posts in the community.
HubSpot discovered that Customer Acquisition Costs were reduced by 50% by turning customers into advocates.
Success metrics to be measured are:
Referral rate
Social shares
Testimonials collected
These metrics show how your brand is trusted enough that customers want to give a shout out about it for you.
Overcoming Challenges in Building a Content Flywheel
Establishing a content flywheel is more than just creating more content.
It's a system that operates across teams, tools, and touchpoints.
Here are some of the most frequent barriers to SaaS marketers, and their solutions:
1. Content Silos Between Teams
The problem: Repetition, inconsistencies and gaps arise from generating content independently from the marketing, sales and customer success teams.
The solution: Implement a content ops model that is cross-functional.
Your team should know what content has already been created and where it fits in.
To assist with this, provide a content calendar, recurring syncs, and messaging guidelines to your team.
Thus, your content is part of an ecosystem and not trapped in silos, where the value of your content increases.
2. Inability to Attenuate
The problem: You are publishing content without being able to determine what is actually driving leads, conversions, or expansion.
The solution: To track measures across the funnel, plug in UTMs (Urchin Tracking Modules), your CRM tools, and attribution platforms like HubSpot.
You cannot iterate on what works, and spin the flywheel quicker, without visibility.
3. Goal Misalignment Across Teams
The problem: Customer success wants to fight churn, sales have to work on quotas and marketing works on Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).
The flywheel slows down, when your marketing goals don’t align.
The solution: Use retention, activation, and advocacy measures to define shared KPIs via metrics like NPS, product usage rate, and expansion revenue.
When goals align, each team contributes momentum to keep the wheel turning.
4. No staged content approach
The problem: Content fails to engage users at different stages of the journey when it's made for all users at once.
The solution: Create a content map by aligning with the flywheel process where each stage should have its own range, tone, and metrics.
The best flywheel takes content for moments, not just for personas.
Measuring Flywheel Success in SaaS
The true beauty of a flywheel content marketing strategy is how it builds compounding growth, rather than just short-term wins.
But then, how can we tell if that flywheel is actually spinning?
Here's a list of why measuring metrics matter, and a few tools for defining that flywheel in action:
1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Why it matters: Measures the likelihood of product recommendation by customers.
In a flywheel model, promoters are much more than just happy customers; they are growth drivers.
Make sure you measure NPS often, especially after major content engagement events like webinars or onboarding.
You can automate your NPS surveys using Hotjar or Hubspot.
2. Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
Why it matters: Measures the amount of money a customer will make your company over the length of their customer relationship.
A flywheel model focuses on the long-term value of a customer and not just the first conversion.
Look at CLTV along with data from content engagement to determine which content formats improve retention.
You can measure lifetime value using Mixpanel or ProfitWell.
3. Retention and Churn Rate
Why it matters: If your content is delighting users beyond the sale, they will stay.
If it isn’t, they will churn.
Map retention curves against engagement with external educational content like product tours.
You can use Segment or Amplitude for behavioral retention tracking.
4. Content-Assisted Conversions
Why it matters: Measure how many of those conversions were assisted by your content touchpoints.
You can use content attribution to prove some kind of ROI, and to optimize the customer journey.
Dreamdata and HubSpot are great platforms to map multi-touch attribution for content.
5. Content Velocity
Why it matters: Measures the volume × consistency × quality of your content outputs.
A constant rhythm fuels the flywheel better than an occasional spike.
You can measure content cadence with metrics such as SERP rankings, organic traffic lifts, and publishing cadence.
And you can visualize this with Supermetrics in Google Data Studio.
6. Advocacy Metrics (Referrals, Reviews, Social Shares)
Why it matters: Advocacy is the multiplier of the flywheel.
If people are talking, then your content is working.
So, obtain testimonials through exit surveys, or trigger reviews after successful support interactions, or both.
You can use Typeform or G2 to collect and track.
Real-World Example: Dub’s Flywheel in Action
When Steven Tey created Dub, he did not just create a product, he created a mechanism for momentum.
Instead of focusing solely on acquisition, Dub has led a self-sustaining loop among product updates, product onboarding tutorials, and social-oriented trust as a direct-to-consumer product.
Dub's onboarding Help Center and detailed developer docs were not just support content but levers to activate and reduce churn before it happens.
Steven relied on his audience on Twitter and LinkedIn to spread updates and questions or feedback based on those updates, creating a community-loop.
This began to flesh-out in the form of trust and eventually, users.
Maybe the best move was going freemium.
That decision invited thousands of users into the ecosystem, creating an accelerated viral loop growth as word-of-mouth momentum replaced usual CAC-heavy efforts.
Tips to Build a Strong Flywheel
Many SaaS teams profess they want sustainable growth, but few actually build systems that allow it to happen.
The flywheel model offers such potential, including sustainable growth, but only if you fundamentally rethink how your content operates.
Here’s what we learned as we built our flywheel, and what the best are doing in SaaS.
1. Invest in Compounding Content
We used to create ad hoc content stunts- LinkedIn posts for content spikes, short-lived lead magnets to generate opportunities.
Then, we doubled down on evergreen SEO and community-driven posts, and the long-term gains compounded.
This is the core engine of the flywheel where content grows in value over time and creates trust beyond the click.
2. Combine SEO and Product Education
The best content ranks and teaches.
There should be no need to choose between blog traffic or how-to's on your product. Use both.
3. Measure Advocacy and Activation
Activation and advocacy are the flywheel's fastest accelerators.
Shifting your measurement metrics to track NPS and feature adoption, not just traffic or downloads is when content finally starts to feel tied to growth.
HubSpot demonstrated this through their advocacy-focused users who helped cut CAC by up to 50%.
4. Be Intentional About Repurposing Across Stages
One customer story became a blog, then a case study, then social proof in a drip campaign.
It is important to map the different pieces of content across the different points in the journey, not just post it then forget about it.
Always ask yourself, "Where else can this content live in the flywheel?"
5. Make Content Cross-Functional by Default
For customer support, you can use blog content in response to help tickets, which helps reduce churn.
As for sales, you can use onboarding guides as a demo tool which increases conversion rates.
Content should not be siloed, rather used as a tool for sales, product and even recruiting.
Thus, when you start applying all of these principles, your content stops being a chore and starts becoming a growth engine.
Final Thoughts
In the B2B SaaS industry, sustainable growth is not generated through one-off wins rather it is created by building momentum.
The flywheel model allows you to shift from acquiring leads to creating long-lasting customer relationships.
After all, when your content works for the complete customer journey, from “attract to advocate”, it stops being marketing and starts driving real business outcomes.
At Rank Wizards, we help SaaS teams turn their content into a strategically mapped, SEO enabled, and advocacy ready to be published.
If you want your content to work harder for you across the full customer journey, let's spin it.
Other Blogs
Other Blogs
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Other Blogs
Other Blogs
Check our other project Blogs with useful insight and information for your businesses
Other Blogs
Other Blogs
Check our other project Blogs with useful insight and information for your businesses