Customer acquisition economics
How I moved the business beyond CPL and cut contract CPA by 39%
Rebuilding performance measurement around the real economics of winning a customer, from first enquiry through to signed contract.
From about £3,300 to £2,000
Historical baseline uncovered
Lead, qualified offer, contract
The challenge
The account was being judged on CPL, but a lead is not a customer.
Historically it took around 23 leads to produce one signed contract. That meant a cheap lead could still be an expensive customer, and the reporting in place had no way of showing which.
The business needed to see what it truly cost to win a customer, by campaign, so budget could follow commercial value instead of form fills.
What mattered most
The strategy
Measure what the business actually earns from.
I rebuilt reporting around the full journey, then fed those downstream outcomes back into every investment decision.
- 01Built Lead, Qualified Offer and Contract reporting so every campaign could be followed to the point of revenue.
- 02Identified the campaigns producing commercially stronger customers, even where their CPL looked higher.
- 03Fed downstream outcomes back into budget and bidding decisions on a regular cadence.
- 04Gave leadership one shared number to discuss: what a signed contract really cost.
The evidence
The numbers behind the result.
Graphs use the exact figures from the engagement. Where raw totals were not available, values are indexed to a starting point of 100.
Contract CPA
Each customer cost far less to win
Historic funnel
Why CPL alone misleads
Historical baseline: roughly 23 leads were needed for every signed contract.
The outcome
Budget started following customers, not clicks.
Contract CPA fell from roughly £3,300 to about £2,000, a 39% improvement. The saving came from understanding which campaigns produced real customers and investing behind them.
Just as importantly, the business now had a commercial language for paid media. Conversations moved from cheap leads to profitable customers.
Capabilities demonstrated
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A personal point of view
What I’m seeing, testing and learning in PPC right now.
I’m John Iliopoulos, a PPC and growth marketer with over 10 years in the industry. PPC Supreme is where I share my take on what’s changing, experiments I’m running, things that genuinely work and the lessons behind the results.
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