Cost per lead (CPL) and cost per deal (or customer acquisition cost) are two of the most common marketing metrics, and they routinely rank your channels in the opposite order. A channel can have a fantastic CPL and a terrible cost per deal at the same time. Optimize on the first and you can end up defunding the channels making you the most money.
Why the two metrics disagree
Cost per lead only measures how cheaply a channel produces a form fill. Cost per deal measures how cheaply it produces revenue. A broad channel might generate leads for $20 that almost never close, giving it a great CPL and an awful cost per deal. A referral or event channel might cost more per lead but close at a far higher rate, which is a mediocre CPL and an excellent cost per deal. Same channels, opposite rankings.
How to measure cost per deal
You can only calculate cost per deal if you know which channel each closed deal came from, which means the marketing source has to survive from the click to the deal record. That’s the same attribution chain behind every revenue-based metric: capture the source, carry it to the opportunity, and divide channel spend by the revenue (or deals) it actually produced. Until then, CPL is the only lens you have, and it points the wrong way.
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