What is a reasonable cost per customer?

Below a third of the gross profit that customer will produce over time. In absolute terms it varies enormously — what does not vary is the ratio.

What decides it

Which is why two stores can pay 40 and 400 dirhams for a customer and both be right. Work out lifetime gross profit first; the acceptable acquisition cost falls out of it rather than being chosen.

The part that gets skipped

Paid traffic is rented and gets more expensive every year. Every channel you own — email, notifications, your own audience — gets cheaper as it grows.

Attribution is harder than the dashboards suggest. A customer sees six things and the last one takes the credit.

The cheapest customer is the one you already have, and most budgets are spent as though that were untrue.

Where an app fits

Push notifications sit on the owned side of that line, which is the whole commercial argument for an app.