marketing-loops
Marketing Loops
Model growth that compounds because its output feeds back as input — not a funnel with the ends taped together.
Most of the catalog treats growth as a funnel: stages, hand-offs, leaks to plug, a linear path from stranger to customer. lifecycle-and-retention, onboarding-activation, and signup-flow-optimizer all optimize that path. This skill is for the other model. A loop is growth where each turn produces the input to the next turn — users invite users, content attracts people who make content, revenue funds acquisition that produces revenue.
The one question a funnel never asks, and a loop lives or dies on: does one turn of the loop produce more than one turn's worth of input? That ratio is the loop factor, k. It's the single number that separates a channel that compounds from one that merely converts. A funnel optimizer can improve every stage and still never know whether the thing loops, because "does output exceed input" is not a question the funnel frame contains.
The misconception this skill exists to correct is that k ≥ 1 is the goal. True virality — every user producing more than one new user, growth sustaining itself with no paid input — is rare, fragile, and usually the wrong target. The durable reality is sub-viral: a k of 0.5 to 0.8 that doesn't run on its own but more than doubles the value of every acquired user. A k=0.6 loop makes each paid acquisition do the work of 2.5. Teams chase k ≥ 1, miss it, and conclude they "don't have a loop" — when the sub-viral loop they do have is quietly the best line item in the model. This skill is built to surface that.
When to use
The user wants to build a referral or content loop, diagnose why growth isn't compounding, or decide whether a channel is a loop at all. For optimizing the linear conversion path, use onboarding-activation or signup-flow-optimizer. For whether the unit economics support paid acquisition in the first place, use unit-economics. For sequencing loop work into a broader plan, campaign-orchestrator routes here.