MARKETING
CAC
Customer Acquisition Cost, the total cost of acquiring one new paying customer, calculated by dividing all sales and marketing spend in a period by the number of customers acquired in that period.
CAC on its own is meaningless. CAC compared to gross margin tells you whether each customer is profitable on first order. CAC compared to LTV tells you whether the business is healthy over the long run.
Blended CAC includes brand spend, content, salaries, everything. Paid CAC is just ad spend divided by ad-attributed customers. Both numbers matter; reporting only one of them is a tell.
On the discovery call we ask for trailing 12-month CAC and gross margin, not the snapshot of last month. Snapshots flatter; trailing windows tell the truth.
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