As a marketing consultant, I work in client accounts and ensure that their marketing works (ie making money for the company). To measure marketing success, I especially like two benchmarks: Cost per. Lechmark (CPL) and Customer’s acquisition costs Benchmark (CAC).
These benchmarks are useful for All in business to know, but especially important for sales and marketing teams.
I work primarily in the B2B room, and the B2B costs per Lead -Benchmark is one of the most valuable measurements. B2B SALE CYCLES can take a long time and it can be difficult to determine the exact cost of customer purchases, but you need to get as close as possible to these numbers.
To help refine your marketing strategy to lower the cost of acquiring leads and customers, here are some useful CPL and CAC -Benchmarks, plus insight from a recent hubspot study of hundreds of marketers. I wanted to look at what the numbers tell us about CPL and CAC along with the behavior of marketing people in 2025.
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Most effective strategies for lowering CAC
Customer acquisition costs (CAC) are how much a company spends on getting a new customer.
HubSpot State of Marketing Surveys has previously proven that CAC varies between companies and industries.
What reduces customer purchasing costs depends a lot on your industry, product or service, customer and preferred buyer trip. The good news is that you can find data with the cost per. LEAD -Benchmarks after the industry and this should help you see how your site works.
I would find some data to see what could reduce CAC. I used HubSpots State of Marketing Survey to understand what marketers are doing in 2025 and above. It is safe to say that any marketing that gets the masses’ attention is what moves the needle for the company.
Here’s what I found:
- User -Generated Content (UGC) is voted as the top marketing strategy for 2025.
- If you use UGC in marketing, consider what kind of media your audience is most engaged in. Reports Marketing people card -shaped videos such as having high ROI.
- Think of your audience. Both B2B and B2C companies are primarily targeted at millennia.
- Authenticity seems to lead the charge to most of the marketers. Of marketers who were examined, 92% plan to maintain or invest more in fire awareness. I would argue that branding and authenticity go hand in hand with video.
Marketing channels with the highest and lowest CAC
Being aware of the channels you are using and how much these channels cost is another way to lower the cost of acquiring customers.
Marketing channels with the lowest CAC
According to the first Sage page, organic marketing channels with the lowest CAC E -mail marketing and public speaking include B2B, as well as marketing social media and webinars for B2C.
Source
For paid channels are the lowest CAC channels:
- Direct Mail and PPC/SEM to B2B.
- Facebook ads and PPC/SEM to B2C.
Source
When measuring your CAC, consider your sales cycle and time to close leads.
I worked earlier in a B2B marketing agency and every year we would run a cheap direct mail campaign. However, the campaign results often did not show up for years. However, the customers we got were excellent! Takeaway is that while low CAC is desirable, you need to balance this with efficiency.
Marketing channels with the highest CAC
The tables above also show us the highest CAC at channels for B2B and B2C.
I would investigate that the marketing people are doing in 2025. It is safe to assume that these channels are believed to lower CAC.
Let’s look at social media in 2024. Apart from LinkedIn prioritize both B2B and B2C companies the same social media platforms. The favorite is Facebook, followed by Instagram, Linked (only to B2B), YouTube and Tiktok. B2C brands favored LinkedIn last, making sense.
Pro Tip: It may be that channels with the highest CAC support channels that have lower CAC. If you are doing a lot of marketing, you may want to consider media mixing modeling to identify how channels, such as a higher CAC channel, support others.
An example from the media mixing modeling article, which I wrote perfectly, demonstrates what I mean: As depicted above, radio ads have a high CAC for B2B. However, a marketing employee found that radio ads increased clicks and commitment to social media by 25%. Marketing channels all have different roles to play and should be measured individually and collectively.
Most effective strategies for lowering CPL
Cost per Lead (CPL) tells you how much you have spent on marketing before getting a lead. A manager may be the customer’s contact information or interest in the company’s product or service.
An effective way to lower CPL is with marketing automation. Using AI tools such as HubSpots AI, Breeze, increases inbound driver by 99%. If you can increase quality lines with minimal effort – AI will fall.
Kyle Denhoff, Hubspot’s senior director for marketing, successfully reduced costs per Lead with creator partners. Denhoff says: “Creators have become one of our top growth drivers in less than three years. Some long -term creator partnerships reduced our costs per year. Management by 30-40% compared to ads on Meta and Google. We have now got over 100 creator partners and they run about 50% of our media network reach and demand. “
When it comes to CPL, you will spend less money per day. Lead. But what does a good CPL look like? It depends on industries and channels, but here is a look at CPL for different channels according to visitors queue.
If you are wondering what is a good CPL, you can refer to average as shown in the table below.
Source
Marketing channels with the highest and lowest quality of leads
Not all wires are a good lead – they do not have every need or desire to buy a product or service from your business. To make sure you reach your target audience, here is a breakdown of channels that marketers use to attract the highest quality wires.
Marketing channels that result in the highest quality of leads
According to case -Sage, marketing channels that result in the highest ROI include (and therefore assumed the highest quality of prospects):
- Public speech.
- Thought leadership and SEO.
- Webinars.
- E -mail marketing.
- Podcasts.
First page Sage presents this information in a table with time for results.
Source
With this new data in mind, I will nod back to what I said earlier about the Direct Mail campaign. The highest ROI -Funeral Channels are:
- Mostly medium to very difficult to perform.
- Animal.
- Take time.
Our direct mail campaign took years to pay off, but we got quality lines. However, it was at least low effort and cheap.
The truth is that it is not easy to generate high quality leads for your business and it will take time.
Pro Tip: Make these channels as efficient as possible so you can make the most of them. For example, AI can help write content, generate blogs from video transcripts and vice versa. For example, use the right software (for example, Marketing Hub) with built -in AI to help streamline processes. The more streamlined you work, the greater the chances of bringing your CPL in line with costs per day. Lead -benchmarks.
Josh Ames is a hubspot and GTM manager at Phocas Software, and he uses HubSpots AI to perform more testing.
Ames says, ”Hubspot’s data enlargement feature quickly improved our data quality, which led to more effective campaigns and better adjustment. 92% of the companies in our CRM had at least one new enrichment property populated by the new function. AI allows you to go from A/B test to A to Z -Test and quickly find out which ads or posts are most likely to perform best with your audience. “
Marketing channels that result in the lowest quality of leads
Marketing that results in low -quality leads is marketed badly. Probably when you are not your audience in a way that resonates or you use marketing channels that your audience is not using.
E.g. Found HubSpot’s report on consumer trends that Millennials’ number one channel for product discovery is social media. Given that marketers in B2B and B2C companies are targeted at millennia, a presence on social media is a must!
Do you remember what I said earlier? The three top social media channels used by marketing people are:
- B2B: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.
- B2C: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube.
Source
Marketing channels with lowest and highest CPL
What is a good CPL? Similar to CAC, another way to lower the cost of generating prospects is to look at channels with the lowest costs.
Marketing channels with the lowest CPL
Visitors queue recorded data CPL by channel. Using the cost average included the lowest CPL channels:
- SEO ($ 31).
- E -Mail -Marketing ($ 53).
- Webinars ($ 72).
It is important that you explore your industry to decide what returns a low CPL for you. The data found by visitors -queue is in conflict with Sage Sage of the first pages that listed SEO as the third most expensive channel with medium sized to high time to get results.
There is no size to suit everyone in measurements, and even companies within the same category (B2B or B2C) have to dig into their nichedata accordingly. E.g. Can B2B be saa’s cost per Lead -benchmark be different from B2B in general.
Marketing channels at the highest cost per Lead
When they stay with visitors the queue’s data on CPL by channel, they found the channels at the highest costs per day. Lead included:
- Fairs ($ 811).
- PPC ($ 181).
- Content creation ($ 92).
CPL and CAC are important parts of the puzzle
Now that you know which strategies and channels are the most effective in lowering CAC and CPL, you can certainly refine your marketing strategy to attract new customers and prospects while saving money as well.
While I like to track CPL and CAC, and think about the bigger image how marketing channels affect each other (remember media mixing modeling) and the time to close a deal is important. As I learned by putting together this article: the channels with the lowest CPL that brings the highest quality wires are also the channels that take the longest to see results.
The editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2022 and has been updated for understanding.