What should customer acquisition costs be? Should it be a certain percentage of revenue? What's deemed acceptable?

Really varies. No common standard. You can estimate bottom up by looking at the cost of relevant key words and applying click through / conversion %s. Ideally, acquisition costs are considerably less than lifetime revenue from the user, but some businesses violate this rule initially to drive growth. As long as the costs go downnevery month and you know when user value will become positive. Obviously you need outside capital to use this approach

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To the question: "What thing investors first look at?" you answered "is this a product/tool or a business". Could you explain how you define the difference between the two ...

Answered by Daniel klass – Partner at Klass Capital VC fund.

Good question. And it is a little grey and i do believe products/tools become businesses. To the extreme: a product might be an i phone app or if we look at an enterprise s... (more)

I have a saas product, charging from $29-$299 / month. Should I stick to low-cost online channels in order to ensuring a sustainable customer acquisition cost or is it a go...

Answered by Tony Conrad – Founder of about.me, partner at True Ventures.

You should test all of your channels to figure out the most effective strategy for you long-term. Given that you'll understand the average LTV for your customers - test ot... (more)

How would you determine what the "right" amount is to budget for customer acquisition in an online business?

Answered by April Dunford – Product Marketing Expert. Posted in Money Management

The "right" amount really depends on a lot of factors including the size of an average transaction, how crowded the market is and what marketing channels are available to y... (more)

Over time do customer acquisition costs increase or decrease for online businesses?

Answered by April Dunford – Product Marketing Expert. Posted in Product Development Money Operations

That's a great question! You might think that they would go down because as you got more popular and had better brand recognition, more of an online presence, etc. it would... (more)

We have a fairly working version of a online platform (market is niche curation) that could be offered to different type of customers, but we are not sure what our next ste...

Answered by Benjamin Yoskovitz – Partner, Year One Labs

It's always possible to solicit feedback without giving up equity. Most people in the world like to provide their opinion to other people. The question is this: Do investor... (more)

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