Why are customer leads getting so expensive?
Digital ad costs increase every quarter while bringing in fewer revenue per dollar spent, making client acquisition noticeably steeper. This eats away at profit margins to the point where growing revenue actually results in making less overall profit.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1building a referral program with adjacent referrers (real estate)
- 2changing ad agencies
- 3increasing product prices
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
r/smallbusiness1 person · September 2026
“I'm seeing the cost of ramping up and growing getting much steeper.”source ↗
nabokovian · r/smallbusiness · 2 upvotes
Where this came up
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