Most companies never find out. The diagnostic settles it: what a customer truly costs to acquire, what that customer is worth, and whether the two add up. One CLV:CAC ratio, measured to a standard finance will accept.
Believed healthy. Measured 0.53:1, under the 1:1 break-even.
Leads, conversion rates, attribution, pipeline: all of it proves marketing was busy. None of it answers the only question capital cares about: what does a customer cost to acquire, and what does that customer return?
Marketing gets hired to fix, more leads, more pipeline, more demand, before anyone asks whether the fixing pays. So capital gets allocated on conviction, not evidence, with 20 to 40 percent of marketing's financial contribution riding on the guess.
Read why →No estimates, no guesswork. We measure the true cost of winning a customer and the real value they return, worked to a standard finance will sign off. So the answer holds up in the room where the budget is decided.
Start with the core business profile. It sets the commercial context every downstream calculation draws on.
Your CLV:CAC position against benchmark. Your true acquisition cost, net customer value, and payback period. And the short list of priorities that will move the ratio most. Nothing to interpret, everything to act on.
Every new customer costs more to win than it returns over its discounted lifetime. Fix this before anything else.
Blended CAC overstates true acquisition cost by 30.2%.
CLV:CAC is 0.53:1 against a 3:1 minimum; payback 56 months.
Marketing claims 50.0% of pipeline; only 18.8% is verifiable.
A ratio is a verdict. It doesn't tell you how fast the damage is done. Capital Burn Velocity does: the pounds per month your acquisition engine is banking or burning.
It ends a familiar argument. Below break-even, "give it more budget to test and learn" just means destroying value faster.
£835,000 a year, at the current acquisition pace.
Your diagnostic does not stop at a verdict. It hands you an online planner: flex the levers marketing and finance control, and the ratio, payback and capital position respond in front of you. It builds the case to take to finance, and it runs on our servers, never a spreadsheet to download and misread.
To reach 3:1 from here: CAC falls to £4,730 (47% lower), or net CLV rises to £26,700.
A number on its own changes nothing. Where the diagnostic finds the problem, the repair follows in the order the ratio dictates, not the order of the loudest tactic in the room. Run it as a fixed-scope project, or as leadership on a mandate.
See the ways to work together →Calibrate is a ten-minute self-assessment. No cost, no login. It shows you roughly where your acquisition economics stand, and whether the full diagnostic is worth your time. Most who run it find it is.
One fixed fee. One board-ready verdict. Delivered, typically, in two to three weeks.