BrightMeal is a U.S.-based DTC meal-kit subscription company with $48M annual revenue, operating nationally and serving roughly 95,000 active subscribers. The company has grown primarily through paid digital acquisition, with paid search now representing its largest customer acquisition channel. BrightMeal is profitable on a contribution-margin basis but missed its new-subscriber target for the last two quarters as paid search efficiency has deteriorated.
You are the Head of Growth. The CEO wants a recommendation on whether BrightMeal should spend the next two quarters optimizing its existing paid search channel or testing podcast advertising as a new acquisition channel. The decision matters now because customer acquisition costs are rising, the company has a fixed growth budget for the next 6 months, and investors are asking whether BrightMeal is too dependent on one channel.
Management believes there is still room to improve paid search conversion and bidding efficiency, but the marketing team argues that podcasts could diversify acquisition and reach a less price-sensitive audience. You need to determine how to prioritize between the two options and whether the answer should be binary or staged.
| Metric | Paid Search (Current) | Podcast Test (Estimated) |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly spend capacity | $1.2M | $400K initial test cap |
| CAC | $118 | $145 expected in pilot |
| 12-month LTV (gross profit basis) | $310 | $360 expected |
| Payback period | 4.6 months | 6.2 months expected |
| Incremental new subscribers / month | 10,200 | 2,750 if fully scaled from pilot assumptions |
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