The Marketing Acquisition Cost Benchmark Report

It’s been an interesting year for marketers, to say the least. I’d dare say unprecedented, if I hadn’t already promised to stop saying that last May. Many marketers experienced cuts to budgets and people and revenue took huge hits as the business world seemed like it was grinding to a halt in March 2020.

Then, seemingly as quickly as things stopped, consumers made a rapid shift to digital — even for more traditional brick and mortar, high-stakes purchases like cars and home improvement services. 

Shopping resumed and marketers scrambled to figure out what their customers were going to do next. How do they want to shop? What messaging works? Why are they calling so much? There was a lot to do, and frequently less money and fewer people to do it with. 

This has caused a new focus on agility and efficiency, even as companies shift back into growth mode. Why? Well, our pandemic-boosted alcohol and home-baked bread consumption habits aren’t the only ones that’ll stick. The lessons we learned in marketing to run leaner, faster, and adapt quicker aren’t going anywhere, either. 

This is why we’ve launched the Invoca Marketing Acquisition Cost Benchmark Report. By analyzing the results from over 500 marketers who used our CPA Calculator, we’ll help you keep an eye on acquisition cost trends and tips to reduce your CPA and increase marketing revenue in 2021.

Here’s a snapshot of what’s in the report. 

What marketers are spending on paid search

Our survey of brand marketers found that the average monthly paid search spend is $128,604

These marketers see significant website traffic

And these marketers get over 1.2 million average visitors to their websites every month.

And a lot of their website traffic comes from paid search

They are driving 11% of their traffic to their websites with paid search.

But customers are also calling these businesses 

Customers frequently call after doing research online for high-stakes purchases. Our survey data shows respondents get over 22,000 sales-related calls per month on average, and Invoca platform data shows our customers average nearly 40,000 calls per month! 

And customer calls to businesses have increased significantly between 2020 and 2021 

We have seen sustained growth in call volumes throughout 2021, with many industries seeing call volumes remain significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels. Call volume has increased an average of 59% for Invoca customers in Q1 2021 vs Q1 2020.

Many marketers are greatly overestimating their CPA

Are you actually counting all of the conversions that your digital marketing is driving? Many marketers aren’t. If your marketing is driving conversions over the phone, you need to accurately measure them, attribute them to your spending, and use the conversation data to optimize your digital media advertising. 

Because many marketers can’t attribute conversions that are happening on the phone to digital marketing, they’re wildly overestimating their CPA. 

How much can you reduce your CPA with conversation intelligence?

Conversation intelligence platforms like Invoca enable marketers not only to measure their CPA more accurately, but to actually decrease their acquisition costs by optimizing marketing and reducing wasted ad spend. 

Want to see how much you’re overestimating your CPA and how you can reduce your CPA with conversation intelligence? Try our calculator yourself! 

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