A signed definition
Agreed and signed before a campaign exists
Output
nobody redefines a customer mid-quarter to make the number work
Before spend
Performance marketing · UAE
Performance marketing with a cost per customer agreed upfront.
Every agency here reports a cost per customer. Few will write down what goes into it, so the number that reaches your board is not the number the platform showed.
Get a read on what a customer costs youWhat gets settled first
What performance marketing settles first.
Three things are agreed in writing before a campaign runs. What counts as a customer, what the number includes, and what happens the month it is missed.
What counts as a customer
What counts as a customer, written down: the event, the value attached to it, and the window it is measured over. Agreed with whoever owns the close, not only with whoever owns the media.
What one may cost
What the number includes, and what it is net of. The platform total and the finance ledger differ by a known amount here, and only one of the two belongs in a board paper.
What happens if we miss
What happens the month the number is missed, decided before it is. A target with no consequence attached is a forecast, and a forecast is what the conversation becomes when a quarter goes badly.
Two ways the number arrives
Agree the number first, or after.
Most engagements here report a cost per customer once the money has gone. The other way is to agree it first, with its inputs, its owner and a date it gets revised.
| Produced after itA report, with a number on it | Agreed before the spendA contract, with inputs and an owner | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sets it | The account does, once enough money has run through it to average. | Both sides, from your pricing and your close rate, before a campaign exists. |
| What it includes | Whatever the platform counted, at the gross figure on the invoice. | Media net of what is recoverable, the fee, and only the conversions the definition names. |
| What revises it | Nothing formally. The number drifts as the channel mix does. | Named evidence on a named date: the first cohort of yours that closes. |
| A month that misses | A conversation about whether the target was ever realistic. | The escalation is already written, so the work changes rather than the target. |
| What a board can do | Ask where the difference between the dashboard and the bank went. | Fund it, cut it or move it, because the figure reconciles to the ledger. |
When afterwards is honest.
Where nothing has closed and there is no pricing to work back from, a discovery period that produces the figure is the right instrument, provided it is labelled as one and carries an end date. What it must never become is a benchmark borrowed from another market and presented as a target. Where a closed-deal history already exists, the arithmetic is worked back from it and generate more leads sets that out; what sets the price of the click underneath any of it is argued in run profitable ad campaigns.
The UAE context
What decides your number.
Webzenia has worked with Gulf clients since 2018. These four change what a cost per customer means before any campaign is planned.
- 01of 04
Your dashboard and your accounts disagree.
Ad spend here carries 5% VAT, and a Tax Registration Number on the account changes who accounts for it. A cost per customer computed from the gross platform total is overstated for any registered advertiser. The netted figure is the one that reconciles to the ledger.
Our methodMedia reconciled to the invoice, not read off the dashboard. - 02of 04
A young company has no history to price from.
New office leases outnumbered renewals by nearly three to one last quarter, so most companies here are recent arrivals with no closed cohort to compute a close rate from. The first target is provisional whether anyone says so or not. We label it, state its inputs, and date its replacement.
Our methodA provisional target issued with its inputs and an expiry date. - 03of 04
Dubai and Abu Dhabi need separate targets.
Abu Dhabi demand concentrates in banking, the ADNOC supply chain and government-linked entities, and those buyers decide by committee over quarters. A cycle that long cannot share an attribution window with a Dubai one measured in weeks, so the two need separate targets rather than one blended figure.
Our methodAn allowable cost per market, reported side by side. - 04of 04
Three teams move your cost per customer.
Two-thirds of leasing last quarter was units under 500 square feet, so the person who signs the marketing budget here is usually the person who closes the deal. A target agreed with the media owner alone is missed by whoever else moves it, which is why the definition names an owner per input.
Our methodAn owner named against each input: media, destination, close.
The contract
Inside the contract.
Six components, not six channels. The channels are chosen after the number is agreed and argued on their own pages, Google Ads and Meta Ads among them.
What a customer may cost
One ceiling worked back from your pricing, with every assumption written beside it
Output
expensive and unprofitable stop being the same word
ProvisionalDated
Tracking built to match
The events the contract names, sent server-side and joined to the CRM
Output
a report built from rows your finance team can check
The order we change things
Unit cost first, then targeting, then the mix, and the agreed number last
Output
a month that misses arrives with its next step already in it
Cost per view
When we move budget
Money moves between channels on a written rule and a logged reason
Output
budget decisions that can be reread six months later
A report finance accepts
One figure per market, stated on the basis both sides agreed
Output
a number your finance team can tie to the ledger and sign
Per market
Our stack
How we build the number.
Chosen for what each one lets us define, join or check. Select one to see what it holds, and what it does not settle on its own.
GA4
Why GA4
GA4 is where the agreed definition is enforced rather than described. The event that counts, the value attached to it and the window it is measured over are configured once and read by everything downstream.
How we excel
We configure GA4 against the signed definition instead of the default events, so a conversion nobody agreed to cannot quietly walk into the number.
Definition controlCross-channelLicence
GA4None
Adobe AnalyticsPaid
Piwik PROPaid
Platform reportsSiloed
How the engagement runs
How the engagement runs.
Three phases, and the third is what makes this a contract rather than a report. The provisional figure has an expiry date from the day it is written.
Agree the number
We work an allowable cost back from your pricing, the margin you are willing to pay away and the closest defensible close rate, then write the conversion definition beside it: the event, its value, the window, and who owns each input. Both sides sign it, and every assumption is marked as one. Nothing is bought against a number nobody has read.
- OutputA signed definition and a dated provisional cost
- SettledWhat counts as a customer
- OwnerNamed against each input
Track what the definition names
The events in the definition are sent server-side and joined to the CRM, so the figure in the report is built from rows finance can check rather than from a platform summary. Media is read from the invoice on the agreed basis instead of the dashboard total. Only then is each channel judged against the ceiling, one at a time.
- OutputEvents wired to the definition, not to the defaults
- ReconciledPlatform total to invoice
- ReviewedWeekly for the first six weeks
Replace it with your own
When your first cohort closes, the assumed close rate is replaced by your own, the allowable cost is recomputed, and the distance between the two is shown rather than smoothed. If the real number is tighter than the provisional one, the mix moves on the rule already written. That is the point at which the target stops being an assumption.
- OutputAn allowable cost computed from your own data
- ShownThe gap between assumed and actual
- ThenReviewed each quarter
The number is agreed before the spend and replaced only by your own closed cohort.
Revised on evidence
SignedNet of VATDated
Our commitment
Four things we hold to.
A cost per customer is the easiest number on a report to move quietly. These four are what stops that.
The number is agreed first
The definition and the allowable cost are signed before a campaign exists, with the inputs written down beside them. A target that arrives with the first report is a result with a label on it, and nothing can miss it.
You get the working out
Each month you receive what the number was built from: spend, net of VAT, the fee, and the conversions counted under the signed definition. It reconciles to your own ledger or it is wrong, and we would rather you check it than trust it.
The target does not move
A provisional cost is replaced on the evidence and the date agreed at the start, never on a bad quarter. If we think the target was set wrong, we say so in writing and show what changed, rather than editing it between reports.
One person owns the number.
The same strategist owns the definition, the model and the monthly reconciliation, reachable at the Bur Dubai office on a Monday to Friday week. The person who explains the number is the person who set it.
Agreed before the spend, and revised only on the evidence we named.
Common questions
Performance marketing questions, answered.
Keep exploring
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Own accounts in two scripts, worked for enquiries not followers.
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Enquiries captured, evidenced, and answered on a permitted rail.
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Pipeline from the accounts your licence can actually invoice.
Influencer
A shortlist you can evidence, and a report that names what sold.
Next step
Know what a customer costs.
Tell us the current spend and what a deal is worth. We will work back to the number we would agree to be judged on, and show what it is built from.
Tell us what you need.