Calculating your customer acquisition cost is straightforward once you know the Customer Acquisition Cost formula and what each input means. This guide explains the method in plain language, walks through a manual calculation, and gives worked examples you can follow — then you can do it instantly with the Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator.
What is Customer Acquisition Cost?
The Customer Acquisition Cost calculation tells you your customer acquisition cost from a few simple inputs. The figure you are solving for here is the customer acquisition cost, expressed in INR.
The Customer Acquisition Cost formula
The core formula is:
Customer acquisition cost = Total sales & marketing spend ÷ New customers acquiredHere is what each input means:
- Total sales & marketing spend — a money amount. Example: ₹5,00,000.
- New customers acquired — a number. Example: 250.
How to calculate it step by step
- Write down the total sales & marketing spend (for example, ₹5,00,000).
- Write down the new customers acquired (for example, 250).
- Apply the formula above to get your customer acquisition cost.
- Double-check the result with the Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator.
Worked examples
Example 1
| Input / Output | Value |
|---|---|
| Total sales & marketing spend | ₹5,00,000 |
| New customers acquired | 250 |
| Customer acquisition cost | ₹2,000.00 |
With total sales & marketing spend of ₹5,00,000 and new customers acquired of 250, the customer acquisition cost works out to ₹2,000.00.
Example 2
With total sales & marketing spend of ₹10,00,000 and new customers acquired of 250, the customer acquisition cost works out to ₹4,000.00.
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Customer acquisition cost | ₹4,000.00 |
Example 3
With total sales & marketing spend of ₹2,50,000 and new customers acquired of 250, the customer acquisition cost works out to ₹1,000.00.
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Customer acquisition cost | ₹1,000.00 |
Tips for an accurate result
- Keep your units consistent — mixing, say, months with years or grams with kilograms is the most common source of error.
- Round only at the very end. Rounding inputs early can shift the final answer noticeably.
- Re-run the numbers whenever an input changes, rather than estimating from an old result.
Prefer not to do the maths by hand? — the Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator does it instantly, for free, with the formula and a worked example built in.
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