Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the honest answer to an often embellished question: what does a new customer really cost? Marketing and sales spend combined, divided by new customers won — without creative accounting using “touchpoints" or “reach".
What matters is not the CAC itself but its ratio to the contribution margin. If the CAC exceeds the contribution margin of the first order, the customer only pays off through repeat purchases — you are selling the relationship, not the product. That is legitimate, but it has to be managed deliberately: how many purchases does it take to reach break-even? How reliably does the second order come in?
Among typical mid-sized companies, the average CAC for B2B products lies between 8–15 % of lifetime revenue per customer. B2C consumer goods with short repurchase cycles are often below 5 %; high-value consulting services can sustain 25 % and more if customer retention is long.