Acquisition strategy / customer research
Follow the customer. Change the strategy.
I took a closer look at how people were finding a luxury cabinetry business, tested a new acquisition channel on a tiny budget, and built an in-house campaign that kept delivering.
Of company leads generated through the new acquisition approach
01 / The problem
Buying traffic wasn't enough.
We sold high-ticket custom cabinetry, but the agency-managed acquisition approach was becoming more expensive without producing the results the business needed. The previous Google Ads package cost roughly $6,000 a week.
The challenge wasn't limited to campaign configuration. Prospective customers were researching and making decisions across changing digital environments. We needed better evidence about where to reach them and what they did after arriving on the site.
Although I held a technology leadership role, I took ownership of investigating the problem because the research, analytics, and operating design were intertwined.
02 / Customer research
Watch what people actually do.
I examined user behavior and acquisition performance with Google Analytics 4, Microsoft Clarity, Search Console, and competitive research tools including SEMrush. Session recordings, engagement patterns, and search trends helped me assess where the existing approach was falling short.
The evidence suggested an opportunity to reach prospective buyers through paid social on Meta, rather than relying almost entirely on search-based acquisition. The marketing team continued contributing creative and brand assets, while I focused on testing, targeting, and the operating model.
The experiment didn't need a large budget. It needed a question worth testing and evidence worth watching.
03 / The pilot
Test small. Follow the signal.
Rather than replace the existing acquisition approach in a single move, I started with a minimal-budget experiment and expanded it as results justified the next step.
Combine traffic, engagement, and user-session evidence.
Compare early engagement and lead quality with minimal risk.
Build targeting and placement around observed performance.
The setup was work. Running it was inexpensive.
I spent around two months learning, testing, and refining the strategy. Initial implementation cost approximately $1,200 a week in my labor. That was part of the setup period—not a weekly bill for keeping the campaign online.
Once the approach settled, actual campaign media spending generally stayed under $200 a week, and sometimes cost around $25 or less. The campaigns generated approximately half of the company's leads.
The system was deliberately lightweight: campaign setup and targeting did the heavy lifting, without requiring continuous intervention.
04 / The economics
The numbers, in context.
The $312,000 figure describes the former agency-package cost annualized over a year. It is prior expenditure avoided before accounting for setup labor and the ongoing media budget.
These figures represent different spending categories; they are not an all-in, like-for-like percentage comparison.
CAMPAIGN_COSTS.DAT / USD
Net savings are not represented as an exact audited figure. They depend on replacement media costs and the finite setup labor period.
05 / The result
The campaign kept running.
The in-house acquisition system generated approximately half the company's leads, with a smaller recurring campaign media budget. During this period, the business also reported its strongest sales performance since before the pandemic.
As of November 2026, nearly two years after my departure, the campaign reportedly continued without anyone needing to modify it.
A small experiment became a durable part of how the business found customers.
LEAD SHARE~50%
ONGOING MEDIA<$200 / WEEK
ANNUALIZED PRIOR COST$312K
POST-DEPARTURENEARLY 2 YEARS
STATUS: STILL RUNNING / NOV 2026More selected work
Different problems.
Same curiosity.
More projects where research, technology, and business decisions came together.