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Free Tool · Reverse funnel calculator

Start with the CAC you need. We'll back-solve every step of your funnel.

Most marketers think forward — "I have traffic, what happens?" Winners think backward — "I want €1,000 CAC, what must be true?" This planner tells you the exact cost ceiling for every stage of your funnel.

Reverse-engineer your funnel

Start with the CAC you need. We'll back-solve every metric upstream so you know what "working" actually looks like.

Your goal

What you'd be willing to pay to acquire one customer.

Optional — unlocks ROAS and profit-per-customer.

Sales funnel

%

Of held calls, how many close. Healthy: 20–30%.

%

Of booked calls, how many show. Healthy: 70%+.

Marketing funnel

%

% of leads that book a call.

%

Visitors → leads.

%

Impressions → clicks.

Reality check (optional)Compare to your real CPC →

Average cost per click across paid traffic.

All math runs in your browser. We never store your numbers.

What it takes per customer

Visitors

179

Leads

17.9

Calls held

5.0

Customer

1

Why reverse-engineering CAC beats forecasting it

Most ad budgets get set the same way: pick a spend, run the campaign, see what CAC comes out the other end. If it's ugly, blame the bid strategy. The problem is, by the time you see the CAC, you've already burned the money — and the CAC is just an output of five upstream rates that nobody set targets for.

Reversing the math flips the workflow. You declare the CAC the business needs, and every stage gets a hard ceiling: max CPC, max cost per lead, max cost per booked call. Now your media buyer, your funnel team, and your sales lead are all working from the same non-negotiable numbers. When something breaks, you know exactly which stage to look at — not which channel to blame.

This is also why most growth-team meetings are vibes-based. Without a reverse-engineered blueprint, you can't answer "is this CPC too high?" Too high relative to what? With a target CAC and a funnel, "too high" is a calculation, not an opinion.

The five rates that determine your CAC

  • Click-through rate — determines how cheaply you can buy attention. Below 1% on cold traffic, your creative isn't earning the click.
  • Landing page CR — visitor → lead. Healthy ranges are 8–15%. Below 6% means you're paying for traffic that isn't converting at the first opt-in.
  • Lead-to-call rate — the most ignored stage. Below 30% and your follow-up, scheduler UX, and qualification flow are leaking pipeline before sales ever touches it.
  • Show-up rate — booked → held. Below 70% means weak confirmation, no SMS reminders, or wrong qualification gates.
  • Close rate — held → customer. The hardest one to lift, but every 5pp of close rate cuts your max CPC by 25%.

Move any one of these by 20%, and every dollar upstream gets cheaper too. That's the leverage of funnel math.

Get the real numbers behind your funnel

Frequently asked questions

What is a CAC Target Planner?

It's a reverse funnel calculator. Instead of guessing forward ("if I spend €X, what will my CAC be?"), you start with the outcome you need ("I want a €1,000 CAC") and the tool back-solves every metric upstream: cost per closing call, cost per booked call, cost per lead, max CPC, max CPM. You walk away with a complete KPI blueprint instead of a vague hope.

How is this different from a normal CAC calculator?

Normal CAC calculators take spend ÷ customers and tell you a number. They're descriptive — they tell you what already happened. A CAC Target Planner is prescriptive: it tells you what every step of your funnel must do for the CAC you want to actually be possible. It's the difference between a thermometer and a thermostat.

What close rate, show-up rate, and conversion rate should I use?

Healthy benchmarks for a paid-traffic-to-call funnel: close rate 20–30% on held calls, show-up rate 70%+ on booked calls, lead-to-call rate 30–50%, landing page conversion 8–12%, CTR 1.5%+ on cold paid traffic. If you're significantly under any of these, the planner will flag it as your bottleneck — fixing one weak stage usually moves CAC more than tweaking ad bids.

What if my numbers don't match the blueprint — am I overpaying for ads?

Probably not for the reason you think. Most accounts that 'overpay' on CPC actually have a downstream problem (LP, booking, show-up, or close) that makes the CPC look expensive. The planner shows the bottleneck so you stop optimizing the wrong layer. Cutting CPC on a leaky funnel just slows the bleed — you need to fix the leak.

Why does tracking accuracy show up in the results?

Because every input — your real CPC, real LP conversion rate, real close rate — is reported by your ad platform or your CRM. If your tracking gap is 30–50% (the industry average post-iOS 14), every one of those numbers is wrong, and your blueprint is built on sand. You can't plan around metrics you can't measure. Fix attribution first, plan CAC second.

Does this work for B2B, e-commerce, or both?

It's optimized for paid-traffic-to-call B2B and high-ticket consulting / agency / SaaS funnels — anywhere the path is impression → click → lead → booked call → held call → close. For e-commerce, you can model it by setting show-up rate to 100% and close rate to your add-to-cart-to-purchase rate, but a dedicated e-com calculator will give you finer granularity (cart abandonment, AOV, repeat purchase).

Is my data sent anywhere?

No. All math runs in your browser. Your numbers are saved locally so the page remembers them when you come back, and that's it. Nothing is sent to a server, nothing is logged, nothing is tied to you.

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