Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Also called CAC, Cost per acquisition.
What it costs to win one customer: ad spend divided by the deals it produced. In lead gen, cost per lead divided by close rate.
Why it matters
It is the number cost per lead stands in for. Two campaigns with the same cost per lead can have very different CAC when one sends leads that close and the other does not.
What goes wrong
It takes a full sales cycle to measure, which is why reports lean on cost per lead instead. A month of leads from a campaign cannot show its CAC until most of them have closed or been lost.
It also needs the sale to be traced back to its source, which is the same click ID or email matching that value-based bidding depends on. Without it, CAC can only be worked out for the whole account.
How to check it on your own account
Divide last quarter's ad spend by the deals won from those leads. Work it out per campaign where your CRM keeps the source.
Next to this
Where this comes up
How it applies in your trade
The same method, worked through for each kind of business: what a lead is worth, what is known on arrival and what to prepare.
The rest of this step
Measure this on your own data
The diagnostic reads a CRM export in your browser and reports your volume, your match rate and the spread between your leads against the thresholds in this glossary. Nothing is uploaded and no account is needed.