Knowing if you have a good customer acquisition cost can be hard. Here are a few CACs benchmarked across a variety of industries. (Source: Propeller)

• Travel: $7
• Retail: $10
• Consumer Goods: $22
• Manufacturing: $83
• Transportation: $98
• Marketing Agency: $141
• Financial: $175
• Technology (Hardware): $182
• Real Estate: $213
• Banking/Insurance: $303
• Telecom: $315
• Technology (Software): $395

See also:

• CAC Channel Comparison (Search & Display) ↓
• Average CAC in Paid Search ↓
• Average CAC in Display Advertising ↓
• What is a Good Customer Acquisition Cost? ↓
• How to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)? →

Average Customer Acquisition Cost by Channel

Paid Search - Average CAC by Industry (2018)

Paid searches are advertisements your business pays for to be displayed under the sponsored listings of a search engine. Below are the median costs per acquisition within Google Paid Search Campaigns in 2018. Note: medians were calculated to omit campaigns that exclusively bid on branded terms or had unnaturally high/low CACs. (Source: ChatterBuzz)

Across All Industries: $49.86

• Advocacy: $96.55
• Auto: $33.52
• B2B: $116.13
• Consumer Services: $90.70
• Dating & Personals: $76.76
• e-Commerce: $45.27
• Education: $72.70
• Employment Services: $48.04
• Finance & Insurance: $81.93
• Health & Medical: $78.09
• Home Goods: $87.13
• Industrial Services: $79.28
• Legal: $86.02
• Real Estate: $116.61
• Technology: $133.52
• Travel & Hospitality: $44.73

Display Advertising - Average CAC by Industry (2018)

Display advertising is any online advertising that uses text, images, videos, audio, and URLs that link to your business’s website. Below are the median costs per acquisition within the Google Display Network (GDN) in 2018. Note: medians were calculated to omit campaigns with unnaturally high/low CACs. (Source: ChatterBuzz)

Across All Industries: $75.51

• Advocacy: $70.69
• Auto: $23.68
• B2B: $130.36
• Consumer Services: $60.48
• Dating & Personals: $60.23
• e-Commerce: $65.80
• Education: $143.36
• Employment Services: $59.47
• Finance & Insurance: $56.76
• Health & Medical: $72.58
• Home Goods: $116.17
• Industrial Services: $51.58
• Legal: $39.52
• Real Estate: $74.79
• Technology: $103.60
• Travel & Hospitality: $99.13 

What is a good customer Acquisition Cost?

A Good Customer Acquisition Cost varies by the industry and tactics used. But a good way to benchmark your CAC is by comparing it to Customer Lifetime Value (also known as LTV). LTV measures how much income a customer is expected to bring to your business during the whole time they have a relationship with your business. What is a good CAC ratio? It is said that an ideal LTV to CAC ratio is 3:1. 

What is the formula for customer acquisition cost? It is:

the amount you spend on sales and marketing / the number of new customers acquired = the customer acquisition cost.

Lowering Your CAC with Consumer Behavior Insights

Improving marketing efficiency all comes down to identifying the most important moments to reach consumers and eliminating non-essential marketing spend. If you understand the online behavior of your target audience, and show up along their path to purchase, you'll naturally decrease your acquisition costs. 

For insights on how to meet your target audience in the most important moments, request one of our Consumer Behavior Insights reports in the form to the right. Simply enter in a topic or phrase you think your customer is interested in, and find out how these consumers navigate the internet - the searches they conduct along their path to purchase and the content they're interested in consuming.

Alternatively, get started today for free to see all that DemandJump has to offer!