White paper
The state of
customer
acquisition
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The state of
Customer Acquisition Costs are up 222%
As marketing professionals, we know our customer acquisition playbook that worked two years ago is already out of date. CAC is climbing, paid channels are seeing reduced ROAS, discounts are diminishing LTVs and the buyers journey now starts with an AI. We surveyed marketing and growth leaders across both B2B and B2C markets to understand how they’re adapting their playbooks, download your free copy below.
Top Level Stats
- 50% of marketing leaders report rising CAC over the past two years. Just 7% are confident their current channels will keep delivering.
- Events and organic search tied as the highest-ROI acquisition channels with paid search and social, despite being the most widely used, barely registered.
- 37% of consumers now start their search with AI tools rather than Google. LLM referral traffic converts at 18%, the highest of any channel recorded.
- Referral and reward-based acquisition delivers 3–5x higher conversion rates at a fraction of the cost of paid channels.
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Research insights from
"{Our challenge is} Margin compression. Customer acquisition costs are increasing while profitability remains flat and in some instances declining, driving the business to move upmarket to find new revenue streams while we stabilise the core."
JJ Kaye, CMO - Capital Bank N.A
What's inside
Our research findings from top marketing and growth teams regarding their customer acquisition strategies. We gathered insights on what’s no longer working, how their strategies are shifting and where they’re now deploying their budgets.
Four Key Areas Covered
- The acquisition landscape - Four forces are compressing returns simultaneously; platform cost inflation, privacy-driven data loss, channel maturity, and AI-driven discovery.
- The channel disconnect- The gap between where budgets are allocated and whats delivering the highest ROI is the clearest finding in this research. The channels most teams rely on are not the ones delivering.
- AI and the restructuring of buyer discovery- 37% of consumers now start their search with AI tools rather than Google. The rules of discovery have fundamentally changed, and most teams aren't ready for it.
- The tactics that aren't delivering- Discounting is the most widely adopted acquisition tactic in our survey. It also has the weakest performance signal.
- What the strongest acquisition teams are doing differently- The strategies delivering the best economics share one characteristic: they compound.
Let’s build
something great.
See how Totally’s API can support your reward and payout workflows. Talk to our team to explore your use case, or access our documentation when you’re ready to get started.
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