Putting customers first: a planning framework for growth marketers

Here's a simple marketing truth: sustainable growth comes from consistently planning new activities that resonate with real people. But how many marketers can say they commit enough time to the type of deep, strategic planning needed for content and campaigns that truly captivate users?

If you’re eager to be that kind of marketer, keep reading. This guide offers an easy-to-use framework for planning your marketing campaigns called ‘AARRR’, a breakdown of 3 methods to use in planning, and a shortlist of 4 tools that’ll come in handy when you do so. Use them to uncover opportunities and build data-driven, customer-focused initiatives to boost growth.

What is the AARRR framework?

A framework provides structure to your marketing planning process. It helps you systematically approach steps like measuring growth and generating activities instead of randomly making decisions and hoping for the desired results.

In this guide, we use the AARRR framework, also known as the pirate funnel or pirate metrics. 🏴‍☠ Dave McClure, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor, introduced the framework based on these 5 customer journey stages:

1. Acquisition: how do people discover your product or service?

2. Activation: what is the user’s initial experience with you?

3. Retention: what keeps your customers returning?

4. Referral: do customers recommend you, and why?

5. Revenue: how and when do you earn from your customers?

📝 Note: regardless of their names, the 5 stages function like those you see in other models—e.g. awareness, interest, desire, and action (or AIDA). The pirate metrics, which sometimes include awareness, are a kind of funnel that attracts, engages, and converts prospects into paying customers.

Once you adopt the AARRR framework, you can start to identify the key metrics driving growth for each stage, also known as your conversion and web analytics metrics. See the infographic below for sample metrics to include in your list.

A selection of metrics marketers typically include in their pirate funnels

After listing your key metrics, track them to understand what works and what doesn't across your framework. This way, you’ll gain insights into customer experiences at each stage and make informed decisions about future activities, such as organic content and advertising campaigns.

💡 Pro tip: track your activation metrics in Contentsquare (hi there 👋). Specifically, build user flows in Funnel Analysis to monitor where conversions and drop-offs occur. You can create a flow for visitors contacting your company, for example, by adding a step for each session where users:

• Viewed the Pricing page > clicked the ‘Get in touch now’ button > submitted a form

Instantly spot where your conversion rate shrank and start an inquiry from there. 

Click through to view related session replays—video-style recordings of users’ cursors as they navigate your site—to see what users experienced and uncover any conversion blockers within the flow.

Immediately see where conversion rate changes happen with this handy diagram

3 concrete methods to help you plan activities that customers connect with

Now that you’ve identified and begun tracking the metrics that matter to your business’s marketing strategy, growth, and sustainability, it’s time to pick them apart. Analyze their performance using these 3 approaches:

1. Discover what works and do more of it

2. Recognize what doesn’t work and stop doing it

3. Find brand-new content or campaign opportunities 

1. Know what’s working—and do more of it

First, use your reporting or attribution tools to initially understand where your purchases and conversions come from. For example, on your chosen platforms for paid advertising, you can track

• The number of times your ad appeared (impressions)

• The number of conversions resulting from your ad

• The cost per conversion (CPC) you incurred 

You can then pinpoint your top-performing ads through these metrics. 

However, while these metrics tell you which ads are a hit among users, they don't explain why that’s the case. It's not enough to solely rely on them when deciding which ads to boost or recreate in your next campaign.

To uncover the reasons, combine qualitative and quantitative user research instead. You can do this by adding a free tool like Contentsquare Surveys to the mix. Set up an attribution survey on your landing pages linked to the ad campaign, asking users what motivated them to click on specific ads.

Launch an attribution survey to get more context for why users click on your ads

This offers a more accurate view of what people want when they engage with an ad, and helps you tweak existing ads or apply the insights to new ones.

💡 Pro tip: tune into the voice of the customer by creating surveys in 3 different ways:

• Using Contentsquare’s AI for Surveys, a smart assistant that crafts questions based on your marketing goals

• Making use of our free survey templates—a collection of pre-built surveys  

• Adding your own questions and images to a blank canvas you can customize based on your targets and needs

2. Investigate what’s not working—and stop doing it

The same hard data can also reveal which channels and activities aren't driving growth. Consider the opposite of our earlier example: this time, use metrics like impressions, conversions, and CPC to identify underperforming ads.

Then again, numbers alone don't explain why some ads fail. So, dig deeper by launching surveys on pages linked to low-performing ads. Ask visitors who saw your ad but didn’t end up converting what they disliked about it. Then analyze their feedback to spot errors or UX issues.

Don’t just stop doing what isn’t working—adjust your marketing tactics based on user insights:

• If surveys show people don't like certain ads because they're unclear or irrelevant, focus on crafting ads with clearer messages or more relevant content

• Or, if users dislike overly salesy ads, try a more informative or story-based style instead

This shift, which incorporates the voice of the customer, makes your marketing strategy more efficient and effective.

💡 Pro tip: the Contentsquare platform helps you unveil and invest in your most influential touchpoint.

As you track user flows in Funnels, you may discover that it’s inaccurate to give all the credit to a user’s last touchpoint before conversion. For instance, in an ecommerce flow, it’s entirely possible for visitors to type your homepage URL, click on a product page, and proceed to checkout. 

Yet, you don’t attribute the sale to the checkout page—not even the homepage or product page. Instead, you learn from watching relevant session replays that users completed the flow smoothly, as if they already knew what to look for. 

Also, survey responses validated your assumption that visitors found out about your most popular product through a high-ranking blog post in organic search. Inspired by these insights, you plan to create and A/B test similar content pieces, enhancing your conversion driver while giving the audience more of what they want.

Use Contentsquare to click through on your Funnel Analysis diagram to view session replays that show real behavior at crucial moments of your ecommerce funnel

3. Start something new inspired by your learnings

Get more from your qualitative data with this third method. For instance, your attribution survey may highlight that a small blog or influencer, currently underused, is boosting customer growth. By redirecting more focus and resources to these channels, you can enhance their positive impact and strengthen what's already proven to work well.

Market research is a vital part of marketing strategic planning. It helps you explore and validate major business decisions like breaking into new markets, reaching different audience segments, or introducing new product lines. One type of market research is talking directly to your users in 1-on-1 online conversations helps you understand their needs and wants. These user interview sessions show you what truly matters to them—their pain points, motivations, and expectations—so you can craft new campaigns that resonate with customers.

For example, Auto Trader—the UK’s largest marketplace of second-hand cars—used market research, including customer interviews, to understand what functionality users most wanted to see from their Retailer Portal. They redesigned the portal and the end results “got great traction and feedback” according to their Business Analyst, Callum Barker-Nicol. This approach works brilliantly for all kinds of marketing initiatives by ensuring they match what your audience wants.

💡 Pro tip: Say you’re doing user research for a website redesign…for the very first time. You aren’t sure how to recruit relevant interviewees or how to manage the process so that it doesn’t take months. Enter Contentsquare Interviews. 

It’s a user interview tool that multitasks. In addition to enabling you to host an online session, it automates screening, scheduling, recording, and transcribing your interviews. Plus, it perfectly matches you with the right group of people from our 200k+ demographically diverse pool. This ensures you understand your target market’s needs, feel more connected to them, and create experiences that help you reach your business goals.

Contentsquare’s Interviews capability transcribes your customer interviews

Must-have tools in 4 areas of planning

Let's examine the essential tools you'll need in four key areas of planning. These applications, platforms, and software will streamline your processes, enhance efficiency, and ensure you're fully equipped for success.

1. Attribution reporting

Attribution reporting tools enable you to track the most effective channels for driving engagement and conversions. 

If you manage a few touchpoints, check out tools like Google Analytics 4, for basic users, Mixpanel, for more advanced users, or Contentsquare—for users who want to understand their attribution data plus how it relates to other qualitative and quantitative customer insights. If you use multiple channels at once, it’ll be much easier to get access to your customer data in one place. You already met Contentsquare’s Funnel Analysis. Now, get familiar with:

• Dashboards: Create an unlimited number of customizable views of your most important conversion metrics. The data updates in real time, providing more opportunities to enhance your marketing strategy.Headlines: when you first open Contentsquare, you’ll see a page with your most important metrics (as defined by you) and any important changes to note related to them. This ensures you’ll never miss the chance to investigate a spike or drop in your KPIs.

Collect all of your acquisition channel data in one easy-to-access place when you build a custom acquisition dashboard in Contentsquare

2. Customer and market research

Customer and market research tools allow you to allocate your time, effort, and marketing budget to the right marketing channels. Paid ads platforms like Google Ads and Meta Ads offer traffic analytics reports, helping you gauge their popularity among users. 

But beware—paid marketing tools don't always provide accurate insights (Google Ads can count conversions multiple times, e.g. when a visitor reaches a landing page and refreshes it, which can inflate figures). You need to complement them with user research tools that prioritize people's goals and aspirations:

• Interviews: connect with your target market directly via a tool like Contentsquare Interviews

• Surveys: use a tool like Contentsquare Surveys to set up a targeted user persona survey for a detailed understanding of each audience segment

Use Contentsquare Surveys to embed small, unobtrusive feedback widgets on a page—perfect for getting insight into your users’ opinions without interrupting their browsing

3. Customer retention

Customer retention tools measure customer loyalty and product popularity. By regularly using these tools, such as NPS® surveys, you can directly collect feedback from customers about their experiences and perceptions. This feedback provides clear insights into what customers like and what needs to improve. 

Then, use this information to make targeted changes to your products and services, ensuring you meet or exceed customer expectations. 

4. Content ideation

Content ideation tools enhance the creative thinking process involved in developing new content strategies, themes, and topics. They facilitate the generation of innovative content, crucial for your latest product marketing campaign or content conversion rate optimization (CRO) plan.

Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and TubeBuddy help you research keywords and identify trending topics. Use this data, alongside your unique storytelling skills, to craft content that grabs attention at the very start of the customer journey.

Adding surveys to your website or after webinars is another smart move to gather fresh ideas for content or events straight from your audience. 

Furthermore, conducting user interviews is crucial. Chatting with the people who matter most gives you a clearer picture of their desires and problems. These insights help you craft content that hits the mark, keeping them captivated and interested.

Pursuing activities and campaigns that prioritize customers

You have the power to take your marketing planning to new heights. With our framework, methods, and tools at your fingertips, you’ll create content and campaigns that truly resonate with your customers and leave a lasting impact.

But don't forget about the bigger picture. To truly succeed as a marketer, it's important to focus on activities that drive growth and ensure sustainability for your business. Striking this balance is key. By setting your priorities straight, you’ll meet your customers' needs while also enhancing your business's bottom line.

FAQs about marketing planning