What should a new customer cost you?
Most owners get asked "what's your ad budget?" and have to guess. There's a better way: start with your revenue, apply one rule of thumb, and let the math tell you what a new customer should cost. Move the sliders with your own numbers and follow the math down the page.
Step 1 of 4
Start with your revenue and the 15/30 rule
You already know this number, so we start here. Across industries, healthy businesses invest at least 15% of gross revenue in marketing just to hold their position, and up to 30% to grow aggressively. Why does this matter? Because it turns marketing from a monthly gamble into a business decision: the percentage is a speed dial. 15% is cruise control. 30% grows roughly twice as fast. Below 15%, you're not maintaining, you're quietly shrinking while competitors who follow the rule take your customers.
Your marketing investment at this setting: $6,000/mo · about $200/day. The 15-30% range is the industry standard for businesses that grow on purpose.
Step 2 of 4
What a new customer is actually worth
Two numbers here, and the difference between them is where most owners underprice their marketing. The average order is what a new customer spends the first time. The lifetime value is the full relationship: everything they spend across every time they come back. Smart businesses are willing to spend more to win a customer than the first order pays, because they know the relationship pays it back many times over. That's the advantage you have over any competitor still doing one-sale math.
First order: $3,000 · Full customer lifetime value: $15,000. If you don't know these two numbers yet, finding them is the first thing we do together.
Step 3 of 4
How ad money becomes customers
Advertising is bought in views, sold per thousand (the "CPM"). From there it's a simple chain: some viewers click, some clickers reach out, some of the people who reach out buy. The green ranges below are industry standards, and they're our initial baseline: we start every campaign against these numbers to make sure you're getting the best results, then work to beat them with your real data. Green is normal, amber means watch it, red means stop and fix before spending another dollar.
We need this number from you
Your math, in plain English, and why we know this plan works
At your numbers: investing $6,000/mo buys about 150,000 views in front of your ideal customer every month. Those views turn into roughly 150 leads at $40 each, and with 2 of every 10 buying, about 30 new customers at $200 each. Each of those customers is worth $15,000 to you over the relationship. So the real question isn't "can I afford to market?" It's "how many times do I want to trade $200 for $15,000 this month?"
These aren't hopeful guesses. Every number above is a benchmark we hit as our starting line, and we know exactly which lever to pull if one of them slips. That is what a plan looks like when it's built on math instead of hope.
Step 4 of 4
The verdict: your number vs. the rule
Now compare. Your cost per new customer, as a percentage of what that customer is worth over the relationship. Under 15% and there's room to scale. Between 15-30% works while you're in growth mode. Over 30% means we fix the offer or the follow-up before spending more.
Green light
A new customer costs about 1% of what they're worth, under the 15% cap. Every dollar in returns roughly 75.0 dollars of customer value. This is a business where marketing is a dial, not a gamble.
One floor to know: below $50/day in ad spend, the platform can't learn who to show your ads to. Slower isn't cheaper, it's just slower.
How fast does it pay off? A new customer takes anywhere from 20 to 60 days from first seeing you to buying, with the average landing around 42 days and about a dozen touches along the way. That's not a flaw in the plan, it's how buying decisions actually work, and here's what it means we're building:
Days 1-20
Your pipeline fills. Ads reach thousands of the right people, leads start arriving, and follow-up begins working every one of them.
Days 20-60
First buyers land. The earliest leads cross the finish line while new ones stack behind them, so every week has more in motion than the last.
Day 60+
The flywheel. Buyers arrive weekly from a pipeline that's always full, and your budget becomes a dial: turn it up when you want more.
Every lead you pay for keeps working for you
Here's the part most owners never get told: the leads who don't buy right away aren't wasted money. They're your audience, and you own it. We keep following up, and starting around month 3, about 20% of your earlier unconverted leads come back and buy, at no extra ad cost. Watch what that does to your numbers over 6 months:
| Month | New leads | New customers | Came back & bought | Total customers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | 150 | 30 | · | 30 |
| Month 2 | 150 | 30 | · | 30 |
| Month 3 | 150 | 30 | +24 | 54 |
| Month 4 | 150 | 30 | +24 | 54 |
| Month 5 | 150 | 30 | +24 | 54 |
| Month 6 | 150 | 30 | +24 | 54 |
| 6-month total | 900 | 180 | +96 | 276 |
By month 6, 96 extra customers walk through your door from leads you had already paid for. That's $1,440,000 in customer value at zero additional ad cost. Read that again: this is revenue your competitors throw away every single month. And it compounds. Every month you run, your audience gets bigger, the follow-up pool gets deeper, and this number grows on its own.
Where this goes next
This worksheet is the exact conversation we open with. Once we've both determined it's a good fit to work together, the first step of our due diligence is replacing every benchmark on this page with your real numbers: your true customer lifetime value, your actual close rate, your market's real CPM.
From that point forward, you're never guessing at a marketing budget again. You know what a customer costs, what a customer is worth, and exactly where the dial is. That's the difference between buying ads and building a growth system.
Want to keep these numbers? Copy them and paste anywhere: a text, an email, your notes.
The benchmarks on this page are current industry standards for local lead generation, our initial baseline for every campaign. In our first 30 days together we replace them with your business's real numbers, and from then on growth stops being a gamble and becomes a dial.
Want a custom plan built on your real numbers?
We'll review your math with you and map out exactly how to turn your budget into a repeatable customer acquisition system.