Customer Acquisition Cost
Definition
The fully loaded cost of acquiring one new customer, calculated by dividing total sales and marketing expenditure in a defined period, including personnel costs, technology, agency fees, and all directly attributable overhead, by the number of new customers acquired in that period. Customer acquisition cost calculations that exclude personnel costs or overhead understate the true cost of acquisition and do not satisfy the requirements of this Standard.
Common Misapplication
The most common misapplication is calculating customer acquisition cost using only advertising spend or agency fees while excluding the salaries of the sales and marketing team. For most early-stage companies, personnel costs represent the largest component of acquisition cost, and their exclusion produces a figure that materially understates the cost of each customer acquired.
FFI Standard Reference
This term is defined and applied in Book 2, Section 2.2: The Unit Economics Standard.
Related Terms
Citable URL
This term may be cited using the following permanent URL.
Full citation format: Founder Financial Infrastructure Standard, Beta v0.5, Glossary: Customer Acquisition Cost. https://ffistandard.org/glossary/customer-acquisition-cost/. 2026.