arkaos 4.26.0 → 4.27.0

package/departments/marketing/skills/marketing-plan/references/aarrr-framework.md

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+# AARRR Framework — Primer for Plan Sequencing
+
+AARRR (Dave McClure's "pirate metrics") is the spine of every plan produced by this skill. This doc is the primer + the decision rules for when each stage gets prioritized.
+
+## The five stages
+
+| Stage | Question | Common metrics |
+|---|---|---|
+| **A**cquisition | How do strangers become aware of us? | Visits, MQLs, signup-page sessions, app-store visits, CAC by channel |
+| **A**ctivation | Once they try us, do they have an experience that converts? | Signup completion rate, time-to-value, % completing first key action, trial → paid rate |
+| **R**etention | Do they stay and deepen? | DAU/WAU/MAU, week-1/4/12 retention, churn |
+| **R**eferral | Do retained users bring more users? | Viral coefficient, NPS, ambassador attribution |
+| **R**evenue | What do they pay, who pays, how does it compound? | ARPU, LTV, expansion revenue, ARR / MRR |
+
+> **Signup boundary rule.** Signup *intent* (a stranger landing on the signup page) is Acquisition. Signup *completion* and everything after (first key action, trial-to-paid) is Activation. Apply this rule consistently across all docs and the plan template.
+
+## Why AARRR for plan sequencing
+
+Three reasons.
+
+**1. Funnel-stage tagging forces prioritization.** Without AARRR, marketing plans become channel-organized ("here's the SEO plan, here's the social plan, here's the paid plan"). Channels can address multiple stages; tagging by stage instead asks the more useful question: *what stage of the funnel is the binding constraint right now?*
+
+**2. Fix the leak before pouring water in.** The Activation/Retention question ("does the funnel convert at acceptable rates given exposure?") is usually higher leverage than the Acquisition question ("how do we get more exposure?"). AARRR sequencing surfaces this naturally.
+
+**3. The Revenue / Referral conversation is honest.** Most marketing plans bury monetization under "growth" and treat referral as wishful thinking. AARRR forces explicit treatment of both.
+
+## Brand and content — not a stage, cross-cutting
+
+A common mistake: making "Brand" or "Content" the sixth bucket. They're not — they serve every stage.
+
+- **Brand voice** governs every piece of copy across every stage
+- **Content** feeds Acquisition (SEO, social), Activation (onboarding copy), Retention (email lifecycle), Referral (ambassador talking points), Revenue (pricing pages, sales material)
+
+In the plan, brand/content shows up as the strategic frame (Section 2) and cross-cutting in Section 11's ops stack — never as its own AARRR section.
+
+## Diagnosing the binding constraint — which AARRR stage is highest leverage?
+
+For every client, one or two AARRR stages will be the binding constraint. The plan sequences moves there first.
+
+**Decision rules:**
+
+### If you don't have any users → start with Acquisition
+- Pre-launch / day-0 / waitlist stage
+- No funnel data exists
+- Leverage = building the first 100 users
+
+### If you have users but they bounce → start with Activation
+- Signups happen but activation rate is low
+- App Store conversion is poor
+- Onboarding completion is broken
+- Day 1 → paid rate is much lower than Day 30 → paid (means product converts given time but onboarding doesn't bridge to it)
+- Leverage = bridging signup to first felt value
+
+### If activation works but users churn → start with Retention
+- Month 1 retention is below category norms
+- Activated users stop using within 7–14 days
+- LTV is short
+- Leverage = lifecycle, deepening engagement, churn prevention
+
+### If retention is strong but growth is slow → start with Referral / Revenue
+- Retained users love the product but don't share
+- Inbound referrals come in unstructured
+- Pricing hasn't been pressure-tested
+- ARPU is low for the value delivered
+- Leverage = WOM mechanics + pricing optimization (these often cluster)
+
+### If everything works at small scale → start with Acquisition (scaling)
+- Funnel is healthy
+- Question is just "more"
+- This is the "post-fit" scaling problem
+
+## Stage-by-stage strategic patterns
+
+### Acquisition
+
+**The diagnostic question:** Where is the gap between TAM-level awareness and current funnel volume? What channels are saturated by competitors vs. open?
+
+**Common Acquisition moves:**
+- SEO content strategy (organic compounding)
+- Founder-led channels (LinkedIn, X, Substack for B2B; Instagram/TikTok for D2C)
+- Paid acquisition (when budget unlocks)
+- App Store / Play Store / marketplace listing optimization
+- PR and credibility-anchor amplification
+- Events (live, webinar, conference speaking)
+- Partnerships (newsletter swaps, integration co-marketing, reseller / agency partners)
+- Hardware / commerce surface (Shopify SEO + Amazon for hybrid businesses)
+- B2B sales support (case studies, partner pages, vertical content)
+
+**Sequencing principle:** Build the organic compound first (SEO + founder-led + content + PR amplification + ambassadors). Only layer paid on top of a working organic baseline. Premature paid amplifies what's broken.
+
+### Activation
+
+**The diagnostic question:** Where in the user's first session do they decide "this works for me" or "this doesn't"? What stops them from reaching that moment?
+
+**Common Activation moves:**
+- Bedrock fixes (broken gates, broken signup steps, broken paywall)
+- Onboarding tests / rebuild (often the most leveraged single move)
+- App Store listing rewrite (the threshold to the trial)
+- Lifecycle Flow ship order (when to ship onboarding emails)
+- Paywall structure + trial length
+- Free → paid bridge (in-app upsells, soft paywalls)
+
+**Sequencing principle:** Get to first felt value as fast as possible. Everything that adds friction between "user opens app" and "user has the experience that converts them" is a candidate to cut.
+
+### Retention
+
+**The diagnostic question:** Why do users churn? What would have made them stay? What's the "second moment of value" after the first one?
+
+**Common Retention moves:**
+- Lifecycle email flows: onboarding, lapsed user re-engagement, post-purchase, win-back
+- Subscription / preference centers
+- Churn reconciliation (often metric definitions don't match across surfaces)
+- Hardware → software activation paths (for hybrid businesses)
+- Annual plan defaults / pricing structure (cross-cuts Revenue)
+- Support as marketing (high-touch moments that drive stories)
+- Community + practitioner networks
+
+**Sequencing principle:** Ship lifecycle flows in the order their content is most stable. Hardware post-purchase flows ship first (they don't reference in-app screens that might change). Onboarding emails ship last (they reference UI that might change). Win-back is a quarterly campaign, not a one-time flow.
+
+### Referral
+
+**The diagnostic question:** Is there inbound referral interest that isn't being captured? What's the share-after-value moment that's natural to the product?
+
+**Common Referral moves:**
+- Ambassador / affiliate program (start with inbound interest, not cold recruitment)
+- Share-after-value moments built into the product (reflection prompts, milestone celebrations)
+- Founder amplification (founder as referrer-zero)
+- Long-game expert / Guides / certified-host networks (for category-creating businesses)
+- Gifting flows (consumer / hardware)
+- Two-sided referrals (reward both referrer and referred)
+
+**Sequencing principle:** Lead with whoever is already raising their hand. If there are 5 inbound ambassadors, launch with those 5 — don't wait for a "complete program." Iterate based on what they tell you.
+
+### Revenue
+
+**The diagnostic question:** Is the company underpricing? Underpackaging? Missing an upsell? What's the "right" price discipline given LTV and brand voice?
+
+**Common Revenue moves:**
+- Pricing audit (what's actually charged today vs. listed?)
+- Annual plan defaults
+- Hardware → software bundling formalization
+- Storefront / commerce page optimization
+- B2B case studies + sales material
+- Long-term value pool flags (data, expansion, enterprise) — flagged not executed
+
+**Sequencing principle:** Run the pricing audit before testing changes. Surprisingly often, the "implied" pricing on the dashboard doesn't match the listed price — discounts, trials, or plan mix distorts the read. Surface the ground truth first.
+
+## How to assign a move to a stage
+
+Some moves clearly belong to one stage. Others span. The rule:
+
+**Assign to the stage where the move's primary measurable impact lands.**
+
+Examples:
+- "Rewrite App Store listing in voice" — spans Acquisition (organic discovery) and Activation (threshold to trial). Primary impact = Activation (trial conversion rate). Assign to Activation, mention crossover.
+- "Eye mask Shopify page rewrite" — spans Acquisition (organic search for sleep mask) and Revenue (sale conversion). Primary impact = Revenue (transaction). Assign to Revenue, mention crossover.
+- "Alex's LinkedIn cadence" — Acquisition (top of funnel for D2C subscribers).
+- "Customer.io Flow 6 (eye mask post-purchase)" — Retention (deepens hardware buyer engagement) with crossover to Activation (hardware → app premium activation path).
+
+When in doubt: where would removing this move hurt the most? Assign there.
+
+## When the AARRR breakdown isn't equal
+
+For most clients, the plan won't have equal volume across stages. That's fine — and worth surfacing as a diagnostic.
+
+- **Heavy Acquisition section** = client has product-market fit but top-of-funnel is the bottleneck. Common for early-stage with strong retention metrics.
+- **Heavy Activation section** = client has traffic but conversion is broken. Often beta-stage products.
+- **Heavy Retention section** = client has churn problem. Often mid-stage products that scaled past PMF without lifecycle infrastructure.
+- **Heavy Referral section** = client has loyalty but no WOM mechanics. Often consumer products with passionate users.
+- **Heavy Revenue section** = client is underpricing or missing monetization layers. Common for tools transitioning from free to paid.
+
+If a plan ends up evenly distributed across all five stages, the diagnostic was probably weak — re-examine the funnel state intake to find where the binding constraint is.
+
+## A note on the order of presentation
+
+Always present AARRR in order (Acquisition → Activation → Retention → Referral → Revenue) regardless of priority order.
+
+This is for the reader's mental model. Founders expect the funnel to flow top-to-bottom. If Retention is the most-leveraged stage but you lead with Retention, the reader has to context-switch.
+
+To signal priority, use the executive summary (Section 1) — name the biggest bets there. The AARRR breakdown then walks the funnel in order, with the most leverage-positive section being the longest and most-detailed.

package/departments/marketing/skills/marketing-plan/references/budget-planning.md

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+# Budget Planning — Scientific Methods for Setting the Marketing Budget
+
+The problem with most SaaS marketing budgets is that they're pulled out of thin air — a number that hopefully doesn't constrain growth too much, but doesn't anchor in customer-acquisition economics either. The result: when someone asks "why this number?" there's no answer.
+
+Two scientific methods solve this. Use one (not both) in Section 8 (Revenue) and Section 10 (12-month outlook) of every plan.
+
+Excerpted and adapted from *Founding Marketing* by Corey Haines.
+
+## Method 1 — Revenue-Based (5–40% of annual revenue)
+
+**Direction:** budget → revenue goal.
+
+You start with what the company can comfortably spend on marketing, then forecast what revenue that spend can plausibly generate.
+
+### The ranges
+
+| Posture | % of ARR | When to use |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Conservative (profit-preserving)** | 5% | Established business focused on profit distribution; bootstrapped; founder-paid customer base |
+| **Standard growth** | 15–25% | Most healthy SaaS in the seed-to-Series-A range |
+| **Aggressive growth (deploying raised capital)** | up to 40% | Recently funded round, mandate to deploy fast, board accepts burn |
+
+For reference: public SaaS companies routinely report sales-and-marketing spend between 20% and 55% of revenue (Zoom historically ran between 20% and 55% across years).
+
+### The math (Conservative example)
+
+Business at $1M ARR, 5% allocation:
+
+- Annual marketing budget: **$50,000**
+- Blended CAC: $100 → can acquire **500 new customers**
+- ARPC: $50/mo → adds **$300K** to ARR
+- Account for 15% annual churn → 85% × $300K = **+$255K net new ARR**
+- End-of-year goal: **$1.255M ARR**
+
+### The math (Aggressive example)
+
+Business at $1M ARR, 40% allocation:
+
+- Annual marketing budget: **$400,000**
+- Blended CAC: $100 → can acquire **4,000 new customers**
+- ARPC: $50/mo → adds **$2.4M** to ARR
+- End-of-year goal: **$3.4M ARR**
+
+### Two keys to making this method work
+
+1. **Know your blended CAC** (see "Calculating CAC" below)
+2. **Match the allocation percentage to your actual ambition.** A founder running 5% allocation while telling the board they expect to triple revenue is showing two incompatible signals.
+
+## Method 2 — Goal-Based (reverse-engineered from the revenue target)
+
+**Direction:** revenue goal → budget.
+
+You start with the revenue goal and work backward through the unit economics to derive the budget required to hit it. Best for:
+
+- Companies just starting up (no historical CAC baseline yet, working from first principles)
+- Companies anticipating outside capital (need to defend the ask)
+- Companies using revenue-based financing (Pipe, Capchase, Founderpath)
+
+### The formula
+
+```
+Marketing budget = [(New ARR / (ARPC × 12)) × CAC] / annual retention rate
+```
+
+### Worked example: $1M ARR → $2M ARR
+
+Step 1 — How much new ARR per customer?
+ARPC × 12 = $50 × 12 = **$600 ARR per new customer**
+
+Step 2 — How many new customers do we need?
+$1,000,000 / $600 = **1,667 new customers**
+
+Step 3 — What's the raw acquisition cost?
+1,667 × $100 CAC = **$166,700**
+
+Step 4 — Account for churn (15% annual = 85% retention)
+$166,700 / 0.85 = **$196,118** (round to **$200K**)
+
+When someone asks how you got to the budget, walk them through the four steps. It's defensible.
+
+### Why this formula and not something simpler
+
+The four steps each correspond to a real economic reality:
+- Step 1 converts MRR-language into the ARR-language a board talks in
+- Step 2 names the customer count, which is what the funnel actually has to deliver
+- Step 3 anchors the budget in the cost of acquisition
+- Step 4 acknowledges that churned customers don't count toward net new ARR, so the budget needs to cover the gap
+
+### Required buffer
+
+**Always add 10–20% as "experimental budget"** on top of the formula output. CAC is the main dependency; if CAC comes in 50% higher than estimated, the cascading effect is missing the revenue goal. It is much cheaper to overestimate CAC than to underestimate it.
+
+The experimental budget also funds the experiments that find your next channel before your current one plateaus (see `growth-patterns.md` — channel S-curves).
+
+## The VC growth path (3-3-2-2-2 rule)
+
+Once a company has crossed $1M ARR and taken a Series A, the implicit benchmark VCs expect is:
+
+| Year | ARR multiple | Cumulative ARR (from $1M start) |
+|---|---|---|
+| Year 0 | — | $1M |
+| Year +1 | 3× | $3M |
+| Year +2 | 3× | $9M |
+| Year +3 | 2× | $18M |
+| Year +4 | 2× | $36M |
+| Year +5 | 2× | $72M |
+| Year +6 | 2× | $144M |
+| Year +7 | 2× | $288M |
+
+That's the 3-3-2-2-2 rule. Useful when:
+
+- The plan needs to map 12-month and 36-month milestones to VC expectations
+- The founder is mid-raise and the board needs to see a plausible path to the next round
+- Section 10 (12-month outlook) needs anchoring against an industry benchmark, not just internal ambition
+
+Most companies miss it. That's fine. Knowing the benchmark gives the team a defensible reason to either match it or explicitly choose not to.
+
+## Calculating CAC (blended, not paid-only)
+
+If there's no historical CAC, use a baseline: **one year of revenue from the smallest paid plan.** Deploy the budget, capture actual CAC data, replace the baseline with the measured number for the next planning cycle.
+
+For an established CAC calculation, **CAC must be blended.** Include:
+
+- Marketing salaries (full loaded cost, not just base)
+- Advertising spend
+- Marketing tech stack costs
+- Content production costs (writers, designers, video editors)
+- Agency / contractor retainers
+- SDR / BDR salaries if doing outbound
+- Tools (CRM, marketing automation, analytics)
+
+Then divide by the number of new customers acquired in the period. That blended number is the one to use in either budgeting method.
+
+The mistake to avoid: calculating CAC from paid ad spend alone. A company that "doesn't run ads" still has a CAC — it's just hidden in the content team, the founder's time, the SEO contractor, the conference booth.
+
+## The reality check on forecasting
+
+This whole framework derives a budget and a revenue goal — not a 12-month month-by-month forecast accurate to the dollar.
+
+**Unless the company is publicly traded, all forecasts are educated guesses.** No startup under $100M ARR reliably hits forecasts to the month. The honest framing for the plan:
+
+- The annual goal is a defensible direction-of-travel
+- The budget is the resource commitment that makes the goal plausible
+- The 90-day roadmap (Section 9) is what's actionable now
+- Month-to-month variance is expected; quarterly review is when the plan adjusts
+
+What's actionable: how to deploy the budget, what concrete moves to execute, what to adjust when real data comes in.
+
+What's not actionable: trying to forecast traffic, pipeline, retention curves, conversion rates, and channel mix all down to the decimal point and expecting that forecast to hold. Founders who over-engineer the forecast tend to spend the plan period explaining variance instead of executing.
+
+**Rule for the plan:** the budget number is honest. The annual goal is honest. The month-by-month projection is illustrative.
+
+## How this flows into the plan
+
+| Section | What to include |
+|---|---|
+| **3 (Current state)** | Current monthly marketing spend broken down by line (paid, tools, content, headcount, retainers). Compute current %-of-ARR allocation. |
+| **8 (Revenue)** | The unit-economics table (CAC, ARPC, churn) that feeds whichever budget method you're using. |
+| **10 (12-month outlook)** | Apply Method 1 or Method 2 to derive the 12-month budget and the resulting revenue goal. Anchor against the 3-3-2-2-2 rule if Series A+ and VC-backed. |
+| **11 (Ops stack)** | Show the budget allocation across the AARRR stages — what % to Acquisition, Activation, etc. The ops-stack mapping informs which line items grow when the next funding tier unlocks. |
+| **13 (Open decisions)** | If CAC is unknown or contested, flag it as the highest-impact open decision — every other number depends on it. |
+
+## When to choose which method
+
+- **Method 1 (Revenue-Based)** when the company has historical CAC data, a profit/burn posture, and the question is "given our posture, what's a plausible goal."
+- **Method 2 (Goal-Based)** when the company has a specific goal (board mandate, VC milestone, fundraise target) and the question is "what budget do we need to hit it."
+
+For most plans in the seed-to-Series-A range, Method 2 is more useful — it forces the conversation about whether the goal is funded.