CAC vs CPA: CAC is the blended, fully loaded cost of acquiring a paying customer across all channels (paid ads + sales salaries + tools + content + events ÷ new customers). [CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)] is the per-channel cost that feeds into CAC. CAC is the unit-economics number on a board deck; CPA is the channel-optimization number on a marketing dashboard. Different rooms, different decisions.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the fully loaded cost of acquiring a new customer, calculated as sales and marketing spend divided by new customers acquired. It is one of the two core inputs (alongside lifetime value) to unit economics, and its definition matters: stripping costs out to make CAC look better is t...