The short answer
Cost per lead, often shortened to CPL, is the amount you spend to win one lead. You work it out by dividing your marketing spend by the number of leads it produced. If you spent 1,000 and got 20 leads, each lead cost 50.
Why it matters
It is the plainest test of whether a channel works. It lets a marketing manager compare Google, Meta and LinkedIn on one scale and lets a founder see what an enquiry really costs. It only helps if you also know how many leads become customers.
How we handle it
For most clients, cost per lead is the one number that counts. It sits at the top of your Carril portal, and it is how we judge our own work. The portal counts every lead once, by the way it came, with what one lead cost from Google Ads and from Meta Ads.
A common mistake
Chasing the lowest cost per lead. Cheap leads that never buy cost more than fewer leads that do.
