Acquisition cost is easy to underestimate and lifetime value is easy to inflate. This calculator uses margin, not revenue, and accounts for the patients your patients bring you.
Revenue left after consumables, lab work and clinician cost. Lifetime value on revenue rather than margin flatters every clinic.
Word of mouth is real acquisition value. Keep this conservative.
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Lifetime value to acquisition cost
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A ratio under 3× usually means acquisition is too expensive or retention is too short. Above 5× often means you are under-investing in growth, not that you are winning.
Marketing does not have a budget problem. It has an attribution problem.
Most clinics can tell you what they spent and how many enquiries came in. Far fewer can tell you which channel produced patients who paid, returned and referred. Drapto's Marketing Center measures spend against revenue actually produced.
Margin. Revenue-based lifetime value makes almost every clinic look profitable on acquisition, because it ignores consumables, lab costs and clinician time. This calculator applies your gross margin so the ratio reflects money you actually keep.
Around 3× to 5× is the widely used benchmark. Below 3× means acquisition costs too much relative to what a patient is worth. Above 5× is not automatically good news — it often means you could profitably spend more on growth and are choosing not to.
Because a referred patient arrives without marketing spend attached. If each acquired patient brings even a fraction of another, your true cost per patient is lower than spend divided by new patients. Keep the referral figure conservative — guessing high flatters the whole model.
Most clinics overestimate it. Look at how many patients seen three years ago still attend. Drapto's Patient Journey module tracks this from your own records rather than from an assumption.