Customer acquisition cost, often shortened to CAC, measures how much you spend on average to win a new customer. You get it by dividing all your acquisition spending over a period (ads, tools, time spent) by the number of customers signed in that same period. It's one of the most important numbers for knowing whether your growth is healthy.
Why this number is central
CAC answers a simple question: does winning a customer bring in more than it costs? If acquisition costs more than the customer will pay you, selling more only deepens your losses. Conversely, a controlled CAC means every euro invested in acquisition comes back with a profit. It's this ratio, not the volume of customers, that makes a business viable.
How to bring it down
Three levers act on CAC. Target better first, so you don't spend contacting people outside your ideal customer. Convert better next: a higher conversion rate yields more customers for the same spend. Finally, choose lower-cost channels, like direct prospecting or SEO, where effort partly replaces the ad budget.
How Kaptor helps you control your CAC
Kaptor rests on a low-acquisition-cost channel: direct prospecting, targeted by trade and area, which puts you in front of the right people without buying each contact. You win customers through your time and your message, not an ad budget. To see how, explore sales prospecting.