Assess Acquisition Channel Diversification

Company Context

FitMeal is a D2C subscription app that offers personalized meal planning and grocery guidance in the US. The company has 1.2 million monthly active users, 180,000 paying subscribers, and $54 million in annual recurring revenue. It has grown quickly over the last two years through performance marketing, but the CEO is concerned that new-customer acquisition may be overly concentrated in a small number of channels just as digital ad costs are rising and privacy changes are reducing targeting efficiency.

Strategic Situation

You are the Head of Strategy. The executive team wants to know whether FitMeal's acquisition mix is diversified enough to support the next 24 months of growth, or whether the company is too exposed to channel concentration risk. Your recommendation will determine next year's marketing budget allocation, hiring plan, and whether the company should invest more heavily in partnerships, influencer programs, and SEO.

The question is not simply whether the company uses multiple channels today. You need to assess whether the mix is healthy from a risk, efficiency, and scalability perspective.

Data Points

Current quarterly acquisition mix

Additional facts

• 70% of total new paid subscribers come from paid channels (Meta + Google + influencer whitelisting spend)
• Meta CPMs are up 27% year over year; iOS privacy changes reduced click-to-subscription conversion by 14% over 18 months
• Marketing budget for next year is capped at $18 million, up only 8% from this year
• The board expects net subscriber growth of 30% next year and wants no single channel to create existential risk
• Two competitors each derive less than 30% of acquisition from any one channel and have scaled partnerships faster than FitMeal

Deliverables

1. Define what “diversified enough” should mean for FitMeal and propose an evaluation framework.
2. Assess the current acquisition mix using both concentration risk and channel quality/unit economics.
3. Identify the biggest vulnerabilities in the current portfolio of channels.
4. Recommend a target acquisition mix for the next 12-24 months.
5. Outline the highest-priority actions FitMeal should take to reach that mix within budget.

Constraints

• You cannot assume unlimited budget or headcount.
• Brand awareness is moderate, but unaided awareness is only 9% nationally.
• Product and data teams can support only 3 major growth initiatives in the next 2 quarters.
• Management wants a plan that preserves near-term growth while reducing dependency risk.