Your target CPA is a made-up number

Ask where the target came from. Every account has one, and the answer is almost always some version of "it seemed about right".

It was what a previous agency ran. It was what the account was doing the month someone set it. It was a figure the owner felt they could afford per lead, which is a fine instinct and a poor target, because affordability per lead depends on which leads, and the target treats them all the same.

We took over an account recently with a £9 target. Forms and phone calls were both counted at £9. The owner told us forms closed about 20 per cent of the time and calls closed over 50 per cent, and that 90 per cent of what closed became a completed job worth a couple of hundred pounds. Nobody had put those figures next to the target. When we did, the form was worth about £37 and the call about £94. Under a £9 target the machine had no way of knowing.

How to derive one

Four numbers.

What proportion of each lead type becomes a customer. Forms, ad calls, website calls, chat. Your CRM has it, or your receptionist does.

What a customer pays, on average, for the first job. Or the first order, for ecommerce.

What proportion of booked work actually completes.

What you can spend.

Value per lead type is close rate, times completion rate, times job value. That number goes into the conversion action. The campaign moves to value bidding. The target ROAS, once there is enough data to set one, comes from your margin, not from a hunch.

Why it matters

A target is an instruction. "£9" says: buy anything that looks like a conversion at an average of £9. "£37 for a form, £94 for a call" says: buy calls, and pay more for them. Those produce different accounts from the same budget.

Tell us your unit economics and we'll work out your targets.