Enter your job value, how often customers come back, and how long they stay. See what a customer is worth and the most you can afford to pay to win one.
See what a customer is worth over the years they stay with you, and the most you can afford to pay to win a new one.
Your customers
$
Count repeat work like tune-ups, maintenance plans, and follow-up visits.
Your business
%
What's left of each job after materials and labor, before marketing.
%
Lower keeps more profit. Higher grows faster.
Customer lifetime value
$0
Profit from the first job
$0
Lifetime profit
$0
Break-even cost per customer
$0
Target cost per customer
$0
Estimate only. This is a calculator, not a guarantee. Results vary a lot from one industry, market, and business to the next, so use these numbers as a starting point and check them against your own results.
Add this calculator to your website (free)
Copy the code below and paste it into any page. It stays up to date automatically.
Job value times jobs per year times the years they stay. $450 × 2 jobs a year × 5 years is $4,500.
02
Lifetime Profit
Lifetime value times your profit margin. $4,500 at a 40% margin is $1,800 in gross profit.
03
Break-Even Cost
Lifetime profit is the most you could pay to win a customer and still break even, $1,800 here.
04
Target Cost
Lifetime profit times the share you are willing to spend. 25% of $1,800 is $450 per new customer.
Compare that to the profit from the first job alone, $180 here ($450 × 40%). If you judge ads only by the first job, you could cut campaigns that pay off over time.
Straight answers
Frequently Asked Questions
Short, straight answers about customer lifetime value. If yours is not here, ask us directly.
It is the total revenue a customer brings you over the whole time they use your business, not just the first job. For a service business that includes repeat work like tune-ups, maintenance plans, and future repairs.
How do I figure out how long customers stay?
Look at past customers in your CRM or invoicing software and see how many years they kept booking. If you are newer, start with a careful guess, like 2 or 3 years, and update it as you get real data.
How much should I spend to get a new customer?
There is no single right number. This calculator uses a share of lifetime profit, so you decide how much profit to trade for growth. A lower share keeps more profit. A higher share grows faster but leaves less cushion if customers do not stay as long as you expect.
Why does lifetime value matter for Facebook ads?
It tells you what a booked job is really worth. If a customer brings in $4,500 over five years, a $250 cost per booked job looks very different than it does next to a single $450 job. Use our CPL and CPA calculator to see what your ads cost per job.
How can I raise customer lifetime value?
Get customers to come back more often and stay longer. Maintenance plans, reminder texts, and follow-up offers all help, and small gains in repeat work add up over the years. Our guide to database reactivation shows how to win back past customers.
