Set Sail Towards Growth With The Pirate Framework

Recruiting new clients is an important path to growth for any bookkeeping practice, but there’s more to it than just signing up new clients. It’s important to monitor your progress right through your marketing and retention strategy.

So how can a pirate help with this?

The AARRR framework, sometimes called the pirate framework, is a way of walking through the five key areas that you need to monitor.

AARRR is a framework that stands for Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Referral, and Revenue. It is an essential tool for startups and businesses to understand the customer journey and optimise their growth.

Acquisition

Acquisition is the first stage of the AARRR framework, and it refers to the process of attracting interest to your practice. The goal of the acquisition stage is to reach as many potential clients within your target market as possible and get them interested in your services. It isn’t about conversion, only attracting prospects.

This could be through digital marketing, or offline marketing. Whichever way prospects come to your business it’s important to monitor these routes to push the ones that work, and cut the ones that don’t.

Activation

Activation is the second stage of the AARRR framework, and it refers to the process of turning interested prospects into paying clients. This is a crucial step in the client acquisition journey, as it determines whether a potential client will use your services.

Progressing prospects through the activation stage to become clients is about relationship development. Perhaps you communicate with prospects through email, letter, in person or by phone. It’s important to understand what works and what doesn’t to allow you to constantly tweak the process.

Retention

Retention is the third stage of the AARRR framework, and it refers to the process of keeping your clients engaged and using your services. A high retention rate is crucial to the success of your bookkeeping business, as it costs much less to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one.

Fortunately, bookkeepers are normally very good at retention because of how we run our services. This can be more challenging when we have annual clients.

One of the most effective ways to retain customers is by providing ongoing support and value. Regular communication with your client to check in on their needs and offer advice can help build a strong relationship.

Referral

Referral is the fourth stage of the AARRR framework, and it refers to the process of getting your satisfied clients to recommend your services to others. Word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful tool, and it can be a highly effective way to grow your business. That said, it’s important that you actively implement a referral strategy and don’t just hope for this to happen

By encouraging your satisfied customers to leave positive reviews and ratings on your website and social media pages, or to have regular touch points in your process where you ask for referrals.

Revenue

Revenue is the final stage of the AARRR framework, and it refers to the process of getting cold hard cash from your clients. As a bookkeeping business, you need to be strategic in your pricing and billing methods to ensure that you are generating enough revenue to cover your costs and achieve your growth goals.

One of the most important factors in maximising revenue is understanding your ideal clients and what they are willing to pay. Offer different pricing tiers or packages to meet the needs and budgets of your customers. You can also consider offering additional services, such as self assessments or credit control, to increase your revenue.

It’s important at each part of the framework that you monitor what works and constantly tweak the things that work and don’t to increase the results at each stage. If you can improve each stage by just a few percent the result on your bottom line is more than just the sum of each increase.