Project: Define your acquisition motion

Your job right now isn’t to pick tactics or channels. That comes later. For now, your job is to identify which acquisition motions are viable for your business.

Step 1 — Review the four motion types

• Paid-led
• Content-led
• Virality-led
• Sales-led

Step 2 — Decide which ones are potentially viable

Use your Foundational Five and guardrails as filters. For example:

• If your ARPU is very low, a Sales-led motion isn’t viable. At least not as a long-term option.
• If you have a high ARPU, all of the motions may be viable from a model-channel fit perspective. Your Guardrails, product-channel, and the four motion alignment factors should be used to hone in from there.

Don’t worry about sequencing or prioritization yet — just identify the set of motions that could realistically fit.

Here’s a quick evaluation checklist to get you started:

• ARPU & Payback: Does your ARPU and payback window support the CAC band of this motion?
• Time constraints: Do you need signal in weeks (Paid / Sales) or can you invest months (Content / Virality) without seeing meaningful results?
  • And remember, you decide what “meaningful” means.
• Audience behavior: Do they seek educational content? Are they guarded (marketers and engineers, for example, tend to put walls up via ad blockers as well as being wary of cold outreach).
• Team fit: Do you have the skills and capacity (creative, content, sales ops) this motion demands?
• Foundation fit: Does the motion align with the rest of your Foundational Five?

Step 3 — Record in your Master Strategy Doc

Go to the Growth Motions section of your doc and:

1. Enter the acquisition motions you believe are viable now vs down the road.
2. Add any quick notes on why each one is or is not viable.
3. Provide your assessment as to how your motions align with the rest of your Growth System.
4. Call out any risks/unknowns that would need to be validated to prove out the motions.

Later, in Part 5: Acquisition Strategy, you’ll learn how to:

• Narrow to your primary acquisition motion
• Map your motion into specific channels and tactics
• Prioritize sequencing between flywheels and linear channels

For now: identify the viable set. That’s your foundation.