BRANDING MATTERS ▼
Developing metrics for your sales funnel:
how to implement the AARRR acronym
Securing business from loyal patients is an important part of running and maintaining a prosperous
aesthetic clinic. Jason Ratcliffe stresses why introducing a marketing key performance indicator
dashboard for your brand is essential for growth and measuring success. He also recommends a
simple framework that can be applied to develop key metrics
S
ummer is officially here and no
doubt you are thinking of how to
capitalise on the holiday period and
the run up to Christmas. At this
point, you will know your target personas
and will want to reach out to them with
a blended marketing campaign—but how
will you know if your marketing efforts are
working effectively?
John Wanamaker, a department store
merchant in the US, coined a quote that
is just as relevant today as it was in the
19th century: 'Half the money I spend on
advertising is wasted. The trouble is I do
not know which half.'
Marketing is essential for your continued
survival and growth as a business, yet it can
also prove to be expensive, time-consuming
and fruitless. For example, misplaced print
adverts can give cosy vanity metrics about
the number of people you are reaching, but
how many actually convert into prospects
that notice your brand and eventually
become paying customers?
In this column, I have previously
discussed using an ascending transaction
model (ATM) as a proven example of a
working sales funnel to attract prospects
and convert them into loyal patients
(Ratcliffe, 2015). Briefly, the ATM consists
of four steps: free gifts, products for
prospects, core products and logical next
step products. Each of these steps gradually
develops trust with your prospects, turns
them into paying clients, and then finally
JASON RATCLIFFE
Technical Director,
First Aesthetics.
e: jason@firstaesthetics.com
318
allows you to provide services to them that
require very little marketing. Quantifying
and monitoring the effectiveness of your
sales funnel lets you have visibility over
this and the overall health of your business.
Metric types and categories
The simple and powerful framework below
is humorously called 'Start-Up Metrics
for Pirates' due to the acronym AARRR!
(McClure, 2007). Each component of the
acronym is very effective at providing focus
to every part of your sales funnel.
» Misplaced print
adverts can give cosy
vanity metrics about
the number of people
you are reaching, but
it is difficult to know
how many convert
into prospects «
For each metric, there will be a total
number of readers/visits vs an amount that
trigger the rules you define. This is your
conversion rate and should be expressed
as both numbers and percentages for
trending later on.
It is helpful to start by defining some
broad categories and data types. Consider
each one below and think about how you
can create rules to collect information for
each one. In many cases, there will be more
than one rule per category, so pick ones
Journal of AESTHETIC NURSING ► July/August 2017 ► Volume 6 Issue 6
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that are going to be effective and feasible to
collect. Make sure your metrics are valuable
and actionable, and not simply vanity
metrics. Valuable metrics drive decisions.
Acquisition
How many users are responding to your
advertising and other channels by looking
at your website or social media page? This
can be done by using a referral code or a
specific landing page for an advertising
campaign, and using either Google or
Facebook Analytics. These will give you the
number of times your page was viewed, the
duration it was visited for and how many
were unique visitors.
In some cases, demographic information,
such as age and area, can be found using
these tools too. However, it is easy to blind
yourself with acquisition metrics; it is
converting people into paying clients that
count, not just the numbers.
Activation
Activation data measure a level of
conscious engagement with your brand.
How many users actually browse your
website or social media page, or simply
bounce to another page? The difference
here is between simply clicking onto a
page and giving it some attention. Did they
read an article or watch a video on your
site? Did they reach out to you for more
information via a contact form? Again, on
Google or Facebook Analytics, look for the
bounce rate.
Retention
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After a consultation or initial treatment,
are your patients coming back for follow-
up sessions? Tracking this will help you
determine if your immediate customer
service is effective, and if any patient (as

Collecting and analysing acquistion, activation, retention, referral and revenue data can have long-lasting, beneficial effects for your clinic
opposed to prospect) marketing and/or
offers are working.
Referral
Are your patients referring your brand to
their friends? If done right, this is the most
effective form of marketing, and can simply
be completed by offering a small discount
to both the existing and new patient and
adding a referral code.
On Facebook, monitoring the number
of times a post you have made has been
shared can be effective too.
Revenue
This is where your prospect becomes
a patient and conducts a transaction
with you. Whether the patient books an
introductory session, a one-off treatment
or a set of regular sessions, revenue data
lets you know which of your products are
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most effective. If you can track a patient
moving from an introductory session to
becoming a regular patient, even better.
Your data can come from several
sources—I mentioned qualitative data
Volume 6 Issue 6 ► July/August 2017 ► Journal of AESTHETIC NURSING
above, but comparative A/B testing is also
a useful method of testing acquisition
channels, such as Facebook adverts.
A/B testing (or multivariate testing)
refers to a process where you show equal
amounts of people either one advert/
service or the other, and then monitor the
conversion or click rate. The advert with
the better rates wins. It is a very simple,
yet effective way of enabling objective
experimentation within your brand and
tuning your marketing. It has been used by
websites to determine what copy should
be used, where it should be placed, what
graphic to include and even what colour
button is the most effective.
Making comparisons
Another interesting point to note is that it
is also possible to monitor the performance
of your competitors' websites as a
comparator to your own site. For example,
www.similarweb.com provides free basic
monitoring. This, coupled with watching
their newsletters and social media output
can give insight into new campaign angles
for your clinic.
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▼ BRANDING MATTERS
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Conclusion
The above framework has given some
ideas about what to collect for a marketing
key performance indicator dashboard.
Marketing costs time and money, and should
be monitored for its effectiveness. Start small
and keep evolving your dashboard by testing
new hypotheses. If a rule is not giving you
something you can make decisions on, try
something else.
References
McClure D (2007) Startup metrics for pirates:
AARRR!!!. http://tinyurl.com/lzqppm6 (Accessed
22 June 2017)
Ratcliffe J (2015) Creating a foundation for long-
lasting relationships with prospective clients.
Journal of Aesthetic Nursing 3(10): 514–5. https://
doi.org/10.12968/joan.2014.3.10.514
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