Marketing Math

Marketing without measurement is just spending money. That is not an opinion — it is math. If you cannot answer the question "how much does it cost to acquire a customer," you do not have a marketing system. You have a hope.

1. CAC — Customer Acquisition Cost Total marketing and sales spend divided by the number of new customers acquired. This is the single most important number in your marketing operation. If your CAC is higher than your first-year revenue per customer, you are losing money on every deal and trying to make it up on volume. That does not work.
2. LTV — Lifetime Value The total revenue a customer generates over the entire relationship. For subscription businesses, this is average revenue per month multiplied by average customer lifespan in months. The golden ratio: your LTV should be at least 3x your CAC. Below that and your economics are fragile.
3. Conversion Rates The percentage of people who move from one funnel stage to the next. Visitor to lead. Lead to opportunity. Opportunity to customer. Each conversion rate is a diagnostic number. If your visitor-to-lead rate is 1% and industry average is 3%, your landing pages or CTAs need work. If your opportunity-to-customer rate is low, your sales process needs attention.
4. Attribution Which marketing activities actually caused the customer to buy? First-touch attribution credits the first interaction. Last-touch credits the final one. Multi-touch attribution distributes credit across the journey. None of them are perfect, but any of them are better than guessing.

AI makes measurement easier than it has ever been. Feed your CRM data and marketing spend into Claude and ask: "What is my CAC by channel? Which channel has the best LTV-to-CAC ratio? Where are the biggest conversion rate drop-offs in my funnel?" You will have answers in minutes that used to require a data analyst and a week of spreadsheet work.