Hosted by: Maryam Golabgir (CEO, Digital Marketing Experts) and Bay Ghorishi (Founder, Forge Growth Advisors)

In an unpredictable economy, short-term funnels simply don’t cut it. The goal of this webinar was to help businesses move beyond one-and-done marketing tactics and instead build long-term, sustainable growth engines powered by digital marketing.

As Maryam and Bay emphasized, funnels are finite — but flywheels keep spinning. A well-designed flywheel generates momentum through every stage of the customer lifecycle: awareness, purchase, success, and advocacy.

Traditional sales funnels are built on a linear path — attract, convert, close — and then they end. This approach makes businesses highly vulnerable when the economy tightens, because there’s no built-in system for retention or advocacy.

At Digital Marketing Experts (DME), the solution lies in creating a Content Marketing Flywheel that never stops engaging your audience. This includes consistently publishing blogs, videos, and guides to maintain client interest well beyond the point of purchase. Coupled with SEO and retargeting, brands remain visible even after acquisition, ensuring that awareness and engagement don’t fade. Finally, by nurturing social media communities, businesses can keep clients connected, transform them into advocates, and organically attract new referrals.

Funnels end with customer acquisition. Flywheels, on the other hand, thrive on retention and advocacy. The difference is sustainability. A flywheel-based growth engine creates self-sustaining momentum — the more delighted customers you have, the faster the wheel spins.

DME recommends embedding this into your digital marketing infrastructure. Start with retention marketing through automated email and SMS campaigns that deliver ongoing success updates and added value. Implement customer advocacy programs that encourage reviews, testimonials, and case studies to power future acquisition. And finally, build loyalty systems that reward repeat customers through tiered perks and exclusive promotions shared across digital channels.

To build a true growth engine, businesses must optimize every touchpoint in the customer journey — not just the sale. The journey follows a natural evolution: Awareness → Purchase → Onboarding → Success → Advocacy.

At each stage, there’s an opportunity to create value. Awareness can be driven by targeted SEO and PPC campaigns aimed at ideal customer profiles. During the purchase phase, conversion-optimized landing pages with compelling CTAs help close deals. Once a customer is onboarded, automated welcome sequences featuring tutorials, FAQs, and personalized guidance create a smooth transition. To ensure success, digital dashboards can monitor client engagement and identify when proactive support is needed. Finally, advocacy comes from showcasing client wins, launching referral programs, and highlighting success stories through social media storytelling.

Sustainable growth isn’t just a marketing job — it’s an ecosystem. Integrating marketing, sales, product, and customer experience into a continuous feedback loop is key. When insights from one department inform another, businesses evolve faster and make smarter decisions.

From a digital marketing standpoint, DME recommends A/B testing messages based on performance data and client feedback. Sales teams can leverage CRM insights to refine targeting toward high-LTV (lifetime value) clients. Product and service teams can use analytics to evolve offerings based on behavior and demand. Meanwhile, customer experience can be enhanced with AI chatbots, live chat, and support automation — delivering seamless onboarding and retention while freeing up human bandwidth.

When the economy tightens, marketing budgets shrink — but customer experience (CX) becomes the most cost-effective growth channel. Exceptional CX drives word-of-mouth referrals, reduces churn, and turns loyal customers into brand evangelists.

To achieve this, focus on personalized engagement by segmenting audiences and tailoring offers across email and social media. Provide proactive support through marketing automation that anticipates needs before customers reach out. And build community through client-only webinars, online groups, and exclusive newsletters — initiatives that deepen loyalty and create belonging.

The final step in building a growth engine that lasts through any economy is integration — combining acquisition, retention, and advocacy into one unified system for predictable, scalable revenue.

Digital Marketing Experts recommends deploying integrated dashboards that track KPIs in real time for agile decision-making. A well-executed omnichannel strategy ensures your brand maintains a consistent voice across SEO, PPC, social media, and email. Finally, every business should operate from a sustainable growth playbook — a quarterly marketing plan aligned with ideal customer profiles and long-term objectives.

Funnels end when the sale happens. Flywheels never stop spinning. By transforming your business into a self-sustaining growth engine — powered by strategy, technology, and customer experience — you’re not just weathering economic storms. You’re building a business that thrives through them.