Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The average cost of winning one new customer: everything spent on marketing, advertising, and selling over a period, divided by how many new customers that spending brought in.

Strong customer relationships push CAC down, because a referred buyer arrives at no marketing cost.

Often confused with

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
CAC is what one customer costs to win; lifetime value is what that customer is expected to be worth over time.

Taught in

See also

2.1.C.2 · 2.7.B.3