Cost of acquisition: the number that hurts
If you don't measure it, you guess. And guessing costs money.
6 sections · 9 min read
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the number that hurts most and the one fewest SMEs measure. If you don't know what it costs to bring a new customer, you don't know how much you can invest in bringing one. Without that number, every marketing decision is a gamble.
Calculating CAC is simple in theory: divide everything you invest in marketing and sales by the number of new customers you got in that period. The hard part is being honest with the numbers: counting time, tools, ads and team salaries.
Once you have real CAC, compare it to customer lifetime value (LTV). If your LTV is 3x your CAC, you have a healthy business. If it's lower, you're losing money on every customer and don't know it.
The most common mistake is optimizing ad cost without optimizing conversion. A cheaper ad is useless if the landing page doesn't convert. CAC drops by attacking the whole funnel, not just the top.
Measure your CAC this month. If you can't calculate it, that's already a diagnosis: you have a system problem, not a marketing problem.
Book your free diagnosis and we'll calculate your real CAC, your LTV, and the top 3 priorities to improve them.
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