Key takeaways
- In go-to-market teams, an acquisition manager owns the flow of new customers, not the relationship after the sale.
- The job is split between running channels and measuring what each one costs and returns.
- Outside marketing, the title often means buying property or companies, so read the job description.
What are the main responsibilities of an acquisition manager
An acquisition manager's main responsibilities are planning, running and measuring the channels that win new customers. They answer for how many new customers arrive, what each one costs and whether they turn out to be good customers.
- Plan the channel mix and the budget for each channel.
- Run campaigns, or brief the agencies and teams that run them.
- Track cost per new customer and the quality of those customers.
- Hand qualified leads to sales or onboarding with clear notes.
- Test new channels in small, measured steps before scaling them.
How is an acquisition manager different from a growth marketer
An acquisition manager focuses on the first conversion, while a growth marketer usually works across the whole customer journey, including activation, retention and referral. In a small company one person often does both. In a larger one, acquisition sits inside growth as the team that fills the top of the funnel.
What does a typical week look like
A typical week mixes reviewing results, briefing others and deciding where the next pound goes. Take an invented software company selling scheduling tools to dental clinics. On Monday its acquisition manager reviews last week's sign-ups by channel and sees that partner referrals bring fewer but larger clinic groups.
Midweek they brief sales on a new list of clinic groups and rewrite a landing page for that audience. By Friday they agree to move part of next month's budget from search ads to a partner webinar, with a clear test and a date to review it.
What skills does an acquisition manager need
An acquisition manager needs comfort with numbers first, because every decision rests on comparing channels fairly. Next come working knowledge of the main channels, clear writing for briefs and landing pages, and the habit of agreeing with sales what a good lead looks like.
Where Pebbles Ai fits
- CapabilityResearch & analysisPebbles Ai reads company websites and public sources and builds research you can trace back to its sources, which helps when you size up a new segment or channel.
- CapabilityProspecting & customer recordsWhen a channel test points at a new segment, describe that ideal customer: your assistant finds matching companies, then the right people at up to ten of them, kept as contacts in the CRM (in Beta).
Common questions
Who does an acquisition manager report to?
Usually a head of growth, a head of marketing or the chief marketing officer. In sales-led companies the role sometimes reports to a revenue leader instead.
Is acquisition manager a senior role?
It is usually a mid-level role with budget responsibility for one or more channels. Senior versions lead a team of channel specialists.
What is a property acquisition manager?
In real estate, an acquisition manager finds, assesses and negotiates the purchase of buildings or land for an investor or developer. It shares the title but not the work of a marketing acquisition manager.
About this page. Written by the Pebbles Ai team for people who run sales, marketing and growth. Last updated .
