What Is CAC?
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the average cost of winning one new customer. It is calculated by dividing total marketing and sales expenditure in a period by the number of new customers acquired in that period. For example, spending £20,000 to acquire 400 new customers gives a CAC of £50.
CAC is a critical unit economics metric for ecommerce businesses. For a business to be sustainable, customer lifetime value (LTV) must exceed CAC - typically by a ratio of at least 3:1. A rising CAC with flat LTV is an early warning sign of deteriorating business fundamentals.
Reducing CAC Through Better Creative
Improving the quality and relevance of advertising creative directly reduces CAC by improving the efficiency of paid acquisition: better creative generates more clicks per impression (higher CTR), more conversions per click (higher CVR), and more value per conversion (higher AOV) - all of which reduce the cost per new customer acquired.
Investing in high-quality product imagery and video through tools like Bryft is therefore a direct lever on CAC reduction, because every improvement in creative performance translates to lower acquisition costs.
CAC by Channel (Typical Ranges)
- Organic search (SEO): lowest CAC, longest time to results
- Email/owned marketing: lowest ongoing CAC for retention
- Social media organic: low CAC but declining organic reach
- Paid social (Meta, TikTok): moderate CAC, highly scalable
- Google Shopping/PPC: moderate-high CAC, high purchase intent
Real-World Example
A skincare brand's CAC via paid social is £65. They switch to Bryft-generated UGC-style video ads and test them against their existing polished studio ads. The video ads achieve 2.1x the conversion rate of studio ads at a comparable CPC, reducing CAC to £31 - a 52% reduction. The saving is reinvested in scaling media spend, accelerating customer growth significantly.