How to reduce customer acquisition cost (CAC) with SEO and AISO

Industry reports clearly indicate that costs for the entire online advertising sector (digital ads) have risen sharply in the last two years. For Google Ads alone, the average cost per click (CPC) is growing by several percent or more year-on-year, depending on the industry. In 2025, compared to the previous year, the average cost per click in Google Ads increased by 13%. Such increases are inevitable due to growing online competition and the inflation of advertising rates that Google has been applying for several years.

(Tip) For CFOs, this means one thing: the cost of acquiring a customer, or Customer Acquisition Cost, in paid campaigns is currently growing faster than Revenue from this channel. That is why more and more companies are looking at SEO and AISO as tools for growth, profit stabilization, and the effective reduction of customer acquisition costs.

The rising cost of advertising is primarily driven by the auction model on which the vast majority of online advertising systems (Meta Ads, Google Ads, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and others) are based. Advertising space and the number of users that can be reached are limited, so the more advertisers are interested, the higher the cost of potential advertising increases.

What will be important from a CFO’s perspective?

With paid advertising, we do not see a compounding effect, i.e., a situation where previous actions and investments build value for the future. With ads, the situation is simple – they are great tools for building quick sales, but as soon as we stop paying, the effect disappears. Paid advertising does not create a long-term effect on its own because when the allocated budget is exhausted, the ad automatically stops displaying, and we lose visibility and conversions.

In SEO, on the other hand, the effects can last for months or even years if we build a solid foundation and make changes and optimizations to the website from time to time. 

From the CFO’s perspective, paid traffic will therefore be an operating cost that will not accumulate value over time.

In online marketing, SEO works similarly to an investment – once the work is done, e.g., an article is written, a website is optimized, or a link is acquired, it stays and pays off in the future. Here, there is no situation like with paid traffic, where we no longer see any effects immediately after cutting the budget. In SEO, once visibility has been built, it will remain high, even if you reduce the amount of activity around the website after some time.

And what about AISO? Visibility in AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity presents an opportunity to reach customers on new channels. Users are increasingly asking language models (LLMs) for recommendations on services or products, which creates a massive opportunity for businesses to appear in the minds of potential customers at the very beginning of the customer journey. Importantly, traffic from these tools is very high quality and converts much better than traffic from Google, which can significantly reduce CAC.

Source: seerinteractive.com

AISO is a process that involves positioning with AI tools in mind. In terms of profitability and effectiveness, it will be similar to SEO. Once AI learns about a brand and considers it a reputable expert in the industry, it will recommend the brand for a long time without having to pay for each click.

Combining SEO and AISO:

• Reduces advertising campaign costs by lowering click rates (CPC drops when a website has a better quality score – and a better quality score results, among other things, from improved SEO elements on the website)
• Optimizes the share of paid channels and saves budget
• Ensures a long-term influx of customers with a lower CAC
• Reduces the dependence of conversions on high auction rates in Google Ads and performance campaigns
• AI traffic already delivers a high conversion rate and is growing rapidly

Learn more: What is the difference between regular SEO and AISO? And why do you need both?

SEO and AISO work like a capital investment rather than an operating cost. Why? Because once visibility is built, it brings value in the form of organic traffic that pays off for years. Therefore, we are dealing with an effect of scale – the cost per customer acquisition decreases significantly over time, because the budget invested in SEO and AISO brings results for a long time.

For CFOs who look at the profitability of activities, customer acquisition costs are key, and the combination of SEO + AISO means greater cost predictability and stabilization of CAC in financial models (fixed monthly fee, increasing conversion). For CMOs, on the other hand, it means building brand independence from paid channels and greater resilience to competition and fluctuations in the ad market. Sudden increases in cost per click or difficulty in winning auctions will no longer be a problem – the brand will have established results in the field of organic search, from which new conversions will flow regularly.

(Tip) From a strategic point of view, the combination of SEO and AISO is a way to scale your business more cost-effectively. This is especially important now, when companies need to optimize costs and paid traffic costs from advertising continue to rise sharply, especially for large brands that operate in many international markets.

SEO and AISO are like your own home. You build it, then renovate it from time to time, but you can live in it for years. Even if you don’t invest in your home for a while, it still stands and fulfills its key function.

Paid traffic is like a rented apartment. As long as you pay the rent, you have a roof over your head. When you stop paying, you no longer have the right to live there.

Ads are becoming increasingly expensive in terms of cost per click and do not bring long-term value, while SEO and AISO stabilize the customer acquisition cost (CAC) and allow it to be reduced by a real 20-30% in the long term. That’s why CFOs and CMOs at larger companies are starting to view investment in search not as a “marketing cost” but as a strategic investment in lower customer acquisition costs.

Source:

https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-costs-rise-again-but-conversions-improve-report-455663