It's hard being a pirate.

It’s hard being a Pirate. Depth perception is an issue and texting with a hook has its challenges. All that said, the infamous AARRR funnel or ‘Pirate Funnel’ makes it worthwhile. Having coined the moniker ‘The Growth Pirate’ to try and make all the mean kids at school like me, it seems only right that this first article explores the pirate-y-est marketing concept there is. I can’t promise there won’t be pirate puns in here (Sorry not sorry.)

Say AARRR: the one funnel you need for better growth

If you’ve any experience in marketing, you’re probably familiar with the term ‘funnel’. I’d say you might have even seen some slick-rick, bad boy banter lantern going on about ‘The sickest funnel, bro’. For that, and on behalf of the whole marketing community I apologise… But we’re talking about the same thing.

In the broadest sense, this funnel might look something like this:

1. Awareness
2. Interest
3. Consideration
4. Intent
5. Evaluation
6. Purchase
7. Loyalty.

This is a hugely important process that we can apply to all channels, for example, generating awareness through printed leaflets, or encouraging loyalty with email campaigns.

Speaking from a digital-only perspective, we have another funnel to consider. Get ready to say AARRR.

What is the AARRR funnel?

It might sound like those 3Rs that we’re taught in schools, but this funnel is all about acquiring digital customers. The framework stands for:

Acquisition > Activation > Retention > Referral > Revenue.

As you can see, there are overlaps between AARRR and the traditional marketing funnel. For example, retention and loyalty both refer to turning your customers into ‘evangelists’ – long-term buyers who would happily refer your services to others.

Others are more digitally focused, for example activation. This could be as simple as a welcome push notification on an app – encouraging your users to interact for the first time.

So, with the terminology established let’s set sail into the sea of strategy to better understand how these relate more specifically to growth. Cringey yet excellent pun. Thanks mate.

Acquisition

Similar to awareness, acquisition is all about finding the best methods to reach your goals, whether they’re website sales, social shares or unique visitors. From a digital perspective, we could approach this in two ways: inbound or outbound marketing.

Defining your acquisition strategy

As with all marketing strategies, your plan will need to start with research. What can you offer your customers, and what is the demand for the service you provide?

Digital mediums to find this data could include keyword research, online surveys or third-party data, such as the ONS or Ipsos Mori.

Once you’ve defined your audience, then it’s time to take both inbound and outbound approaches. Consider:

• Inbound: running targeted PPC campaigns based on popular search queries
• Outbound: sharing content or paid social media campaigns to put your product in front of people.

Activation

This is arguably the most important step for digital growth. The average bounce rates for websites can be anywhere as high as 70 per cent, while one in four mobile app users abandon after the first use. 

Defining your activation strategy

Industry professionals call the activation strategy “finding the a-ha moment” – giving users a reason to engage. Personalisation comes into play here, as mentioned above with our mobile example.

Give your users a reason to engage by:

• Sending a welcome email
• Offering an in-app tutorial
• Encouraging loyalty schemes
• Streamlining the registration process, e.g., allowing users to sign in through Facebook.

They say you only have one chance to make a first impression - this also happens to be the reason why I don’t wear pirate clothes anymore. Get your users’ attention for long-term engagement. For example, up to 95 per cent of app users go dormant if they don’t receive push notifications, so introduce yourself! 

Retention

If activation is king, retention is at least a prince. We want to avoid the dreaded drop-off by keeping our users interested. Again, this comes down to personalisation, as well as consistent marketing messaging.

Defining your retention strategy

The beauty of retention in digital marketing is that much of it can be automated. For example, you could automate email notifications to contact users who have not made a purchase in a set amount of time.

Likewise, as a growth marketing outfit, we’re big fans of remarketing. Consider using display ads to remind your users of the products on offer. From a budget perspective, you only need to be focusing about 10% of your total spend on this audience as it’s naturally smaller but it’s as warm as a Tortuga sunrise.

Want a long-term customer? Reward their loyalty. Send them targeted promotions, or enter them into prize draws for liking and sharing social media content. You can employ a multi-channel strategy by using push notifications, email campaigns and even personalised URLs or voucher codes.

Referral

Referrals are hands-down one of the best ways to secure organic growth. Studies show that up to 81 per cent of customers’ purchase decisions are influenced by other people, so use this to your advantage,

Defining your referral strategy

Once again, a little incentive goes a long way. You can offer your existing customers a discount for referring X number of friends, or take this even further with additional discounts for new sign-ups.

Referrals are also a great way of improving your social media engagement. A simple ‘like and share’ campaign with a prize incentive can increase brand awareness with minimal effort.

Finally, don’t forget to make the most of reviews. These should be highly accessible, for example on TrustPilot or Google, so that prospective customers can get a feel for your brand. Encouraging user reviews is tricky at the best of times, so make it easy for them. Leave a review box on the thank you page, or automate an email to go out X days after purchase. Third-party tools like Feefo can help you with this.

Revenue

You can’t increase revenue without growth, and you can’t increase growth without revenue. So, how do we overcome this chicken and egg situation? It’s all to do with careful testing and relevant promotion.

Defining your revenue strategy

To increase your revenue, start by looking at your existing data. Akin to market research, we need this initial data to power further decision making. Ask yourself questions like:

• Where are my leads coming from?
• What is the average order value?
• What is the customer lifetime value?

By answering these questions, you can ‘trim the fat’ and focus your resource on the best revenue-building strategies. These may include:

• Adding related pages to upsell to existing customers e.g. ‘people also bought’
• Using in-app monetisation strategies like advertising
• Defining customer segments based on user behaviours
• Sending out targeted promotions based on seasonality or segments

Turn your AARRR into growth

As we can see here, every stage in the AARRR framework leads to growth, whether that’s through awareness or customer loyalty. Your role is to continue understanding your customers and refining your tactics to grow your audience. You probably were wondering why pirates are good at marketing? Well, they just AARRR. 

That's literally the best joke I know. Don’t walk away…..

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