The customer you are paying for

Your marketing is built for a particular customer. Not deliberately, perhaps, but it is. And your growth plan is counting on a customer as well. The useful question is whether those are the same person.

Let's take the first one. Look at where your spend actually lands. If most of it runs to people who have already bought, if your best offers go out to your list rather than your ads, if the campaigns carrying the weight are retargeting, then your money is going to the customer you already have. That is the customer you are paying for.

Now the second, and it is a different question entirely. Where is next year's growth supposed to come from?

If your answer is more customers, you are counting on strangers.

If your answer is a wider range and more orders from the people who already like you, you are counting on your list. That is the customer you are counting on.

Hold your two answers next to each other.

For plenty of brands they do not match, and a mismatch like that is expensive in a very quiet way. You have two doors. Your spend is standing at one of them, and the growth you are counting on is walking through the other.

Nobody was asked to decide

This is rarely a mistake anyone made. It is a decision nobody was ever asked to make. An account gets set up, it works well enough, and its habits quietly start standing in for a strategy. An agency will run those habits skilfully. That is what they do best. But which customer your brand grows on is not a campaign decision. It sits above your ad account, and that decision should belong to you.

Deciding it on purpose

So decide it, then let your target numbers follow. Most owners have this the other way round. "What a new customer is allowed to cost" is a key indicator most don't define. It is not a figure you look up by best practice. Instead, it should move based on the answer you just gave.

For example, if you are counting on strangers, you can pay more to win a first order, as long as you know repeat purchases earn it back. If you are counting on the customers you already have, then your new acquisition number comes down and margin becomes the thing you protect.

So check your data. Pick your "growth" customer with intention, set a number that matches. Let your ad account make a lot of decisions on your behalf. But, don't let your "growth" numbers be one of them.