AllTrails · Go-to-market · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

How should AllTrails grow organic acquisition?

AllTrails is a consumer app and website that helps people find, review, and navigate hiking, biking, and running trails. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

Growth strategy
Product sense
Metrics
Prioritization
Experiment design

The situation

Your GM for growth asks you to propose how AllTrails should acquire many more new users without depending on a big paid marketing budget. AllTrails already helps people discover trails and use a mobile app while outdoors, but growth is uneven: many people find hiking ideas on the open web, then leave, and only a minority create accounts or contribute content like ratings, reviews, photos, or trail edits. The team believes there may be a product led acquisition motion hidden inside the existing experience, but it is not obvious where to focus. Search behavior is fragmented by location, activity, skill level, and preferences like dog friendly or kid friendly, and poor quality pages could hurt trust. At the same time, the app team wants more registered users because the mobile use case is strong once someone has picked a trail. Assume you have one planning cycle to recommend a go to market strategy for web acquisition that can also increase app registrations over the next year.

What to produce

A 1 to 2 page product strategy memo.

Your answer must

Identify the main user segments and their discovery intents, including at least one high intent web to app journey.
Compare at least two acquisition approaches and explain tradeoffs on scale, quality, speed, and resource needs.
Recommend one strategy and describe the product surfaces, content types, and distribution mechanics you would prioritize.
Define success metrics across visitor acquisition, account creation, app activation, and contributor supply.
Outline the first three experiments or launches, including risks, guardrails, and how you would protect content quality and trust.

Constraints

Do not assume a large increase in paid marketing spend.
Work within AllTrails' current core product, trail discovery on the web and mobile guidance in the app.
Any plan must scale across many geographies and activities without requiring a large editorial team.
Preserve user trust, relevance, and safety, and avoid low quality pages or incentives that pollute trail information.

Format

Use short sections for problem framing, options considered, recommendation, metrics, and experiment plan.

How AllTrails actually played it

Shows how user trails and reviews become search pages that bring in new users, some of whom contribute more content.

User content can power search growth
Match pages to search intent
Ease account creation

Built from How AllTrails Acquired 55 Million Users Organically by Kurtis Morrison.