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Your 2026 Marketing ROI Starts With One Number: CAC

Your 2026 Marketing ROI Starts With One Number: CAC

26th Edition: Through the Funnel (Marketing News & Jobs)

MarketingHQ
November 18, 2025

News From MHQ to You 📰

Welcome back to another edition of the MHQ newsletter, where we dig into what actually drives modern marketing.

Today’s topic is one every marketing leader thinks they understand…until they try to calculate it:

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)

Simple on the surface, messy underneath. Most companies think they’re measuring CAC, but they’re really measuring is a gut feeling.

Believe it or not, the new year is right around the corner. Time to start your 2026 planning and budgeting. To plan with confidence, you need to know what worked in 2025, not by instincts, but by real numbers. Calculating CAC correctly is the single best way to get that clarity.

Many marketers don’t love math, and CAC is one of the most misunderstood (and most dangerous) metrics when it’s calculated incorrectly. In this edition I’ll walk you through CAC step-by-step so you can avoid the common pitfalls and identify what to double down on in 2026.

Why CAC Matters

Before we dive in, I want to give you the full picture…what CAC really is, why most teams calculate it wrong, and how to fix it. So let’s start from the top.

CAC answers the most important question in marketing: How much does it cost to acquire a customer profitably?

Not:

Impressions
Traffic
Leads
MQLs

But: What did we spend, and what did we get back? If CAC is wrong, every downstream decision is wrong.

The Real Problem: Most CAC Numbers Are Mislabeled

Most CAC numbers aren’t wrong, they’re mislabeled. And mislabeled CAC is just as dangerous as miscalculated CAC because it leads to bad decisions.

Here’s the real breakdown:

Fake CAC

This is the “CAC” many teams report. It ignores people, tools, content, sales assist, and channel differences.

It’s basically:
Spend ÷ new customers (with half the costs missing)
It’s not CAC, it’s noise.

Blended CAC

This is the true all-in CAC across the entire business:
Paid + organic + people + tools + events + content + sales assist

Blended CAC is directionally useful, but still too broad for decisions because every channel is lumped together.

Channel-Level CAC (the gold standard)

This isolates efficiency per channel:
All-in channel spend ÷ customers from that channel

This is the CAC you need for budgeting, forecasting, and deciding where to scale.

Activity-Level CAC

Within a channel, this shows what’s actually working:
Specific event/campaign spend ÷ customers

This tells you which programs deserve more budget, and which should be cut.

CAC Across Channels: The Real Shift

Once you understand what real CAC is, the next shift is how CAC behaves across channels, and why it’s becoming a strategic metric instead of just a reporting metric.

Old playbook: chase volume
New playbook: maximize efficiency

Because:

Paid costs are rising
Trust in marketing is dropping
Sales cycles are lengthening
Budgets are tightening
Boards demand measurable returns

CAC is becoming the north star of revenue efficiency.

What Marketers Should Do

Break CAC down by specific channels, such as:

Paid search
Paid social
LinkedIn ads
Events (as a channel)

And this is where most teams unintentionally sabotage their CAC.

The problem isn’t treating umbrella programs like Events or Digital as channels, those are valid channels.

The mistake is how they calculate CAC inside those channels:

❌ They blend everything together into vague buckets like:

“Event CAC” → every trade show, every field dinner, every summit all combined
“Digital CAC” → paid social + paid search + content syndication + retargeting all rolled into one

This hides which activities inside the channel actually work, and which quietly burn budget.

The correct way to measure CAC

1. Channel-Level CAC (macro view)

All spend for the channel ÷ all customers that channel produced
→ Shows whether the channel itself is efficient.

Examples:

Events (as a whole)
Paid social (as a whole)
Paid search (as a whole)

This tells you: Should we invest more or less in this channel?

2. Activity-Level CAC
Spend for a specific event/campaign ÷ customers from that activity
→ Shows which activities inside the channel are actually driving growth.

Examples:

RSA Conference
A specific field dinner
One LinkedIn ad campaign

This tells you: Which specific programs inside the channel deserve more budget, and which should be cut?

Blended CAC = how efficient marketing is overall
Channel-level CAC = how efficient each program is
Activity-level CAC = which specific activities drive results

Paid CAC vs. Blended CAC: The Real Difference

And once you’ve nailed channel-level and activity-level CAC, there’s one more diagnostic lens that matters: paid vs. blended. This ratio tells you whether your paid engine is scalable or whether organic is carrying the weight.

Blended CAC shows your overall efficiency.
Paid CAC shows how scalable your paid engine is.

Paid CAC includes only paid acquisition:

Paid search
Paid social
LinkedIn ads
Display
Vendor programs
Paid events
Partnerships
Influencers

Blended CAC includes everything:

Paid + organic
Events
SEO/content
Brand
Tools
Salaries
Sales assist
Partnerships

The metric that matters:
Paid CAC ÷ Blended CAC

2x or higher → strong organic + community engine
Shrinking → too reliant on paid to grow

Blended CAC = overall health
Paid CAC = your ceiling

Attribution Will Always Be Messy

No model can reliably pinpoint the one touchpoint that created a customer.

A buyer might:

See you at a trade show
Hear you on a podcast
Get retargeted
Convert on LinkedIn

Even with first-touch, last-touch, or multi-touch: Attribution is directional, not absolute. Consistency is more important than precision.

Smart marketers:

Use attribution directionally
Pair data with AE feedback
Analyze cohorts
Accept blended influence
Track trends

Two truths can coexist:

Perfect attribution is impossible
Strong CAC discipline still wins

Pair CAC With Payback

CAC alone doesn’t tell the whole story.

Payback = CAC ÷ gross profit per customer

Two channels can have similar CAC but opposite economics:

Example A
CAC: $6K
Payback: 60 days
→ Elite.

Example B
CAC: $500
Payback: 18 months
→ Weak.

High CAC + fast payback = great.
Low CAC + slow payback = terrible.

If you can’t calculate payback perfectly, estimate it. Rough accuracy beats ignoring it.

Put CAC Next to Lifetime Value (LTV)

CAC on its own tells you the cost to acquire a customer.
LTV tells you how much value that customer generates over time.

Your CAC/LTV ratio shows if you’re creating value:

1:3 = healthy
1:5 = elite
1:1 = danger zone

High CAC is fine if LTV is strong.
Low CAC means nothing if churn is high.

CAC × LTV × Payback = your entire growth model.

True CAC Examples

These examples show channel-level CAC, the cost to acquire customers across an entire channel, including all programs, tools, and people time within that channel.

LinkedIn Paid Ads (Channel-Level)
Spend: $360K
Creative/tools: $80K
People: $140K
New customers: 48

CAC: $12K

Is that good?
It depends on ACV, churn, margin, LTV, and payback.
CAC only matters in context.

Events Program (Channel-Level)
6 trade shows
12 field dinners
Budget: $350K
People cost: $120K
New logos: 35

CAC: $13K

Performance:
ACV: $45K
Gross margin: 80%
Gross profit: $36K
Payback: 4.5 months
LTV (4-year contract): ~$167K
CAC:LTV: 1:12

Exceptional performance!

Events Activity-Level CAC

RSA Conference

Spend: $150K
People: $40K
Customers: 6

CAC: ~$31,666

RSA’s CAC (~$31.6K) is more than double the events channel average.
But CAC doesn’t matter until you compare it to value.

If RSA generated significantly higher ACV deals and maintained a fast payback period, it could still outperform the rest of the events program, even with a high CAC.

High CAC is never the problem.
High CAC with slow payback is.

CAC Reality Check

A few truths:

CAC rises as you scale
CAC exposes weak channels
Attribution will always be imperfect
CAC forces real trade-offs
CAC discipline separates pros from amateurs

CAC isn’t a finance metric, it’s a strategy.

Your Move This Week

Pick one major spend category and calculate:

1. Program CAC (Channel-Level)
Total channel spend ÷ customers
→ Is the channel efficient?

2. Activity-Level CAC
Specific activity spend ÷ customers
→ Which programs actually performed?

3. Payback
CAC ÷ gross profit per customer
→ How fast does the investment return cash?

4. LTV for That Cohort
Annual gross profit × lifespan
→ How much value did these customers create?

5. ARR Impact
New customers × ACV
→ How much revenue did this effort add?

Run these numbers and you’ll almost always uncover something unexpected…sometimes uncomfortable, often game-changing and that will reshape your 2026 plan for the better.

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