One of the biggest differences between traditional subscription businesses and creator businesses is paid media.

Most SaaS companies live and die by their ability to acquire users through advertising. Creators? They mostly rely on organic growth: social posts, YouTube shoutouts, and the occasional pinned comment. That works to a point. But at some stage, if you want to scale, you have to consider putting real money behind your most valuable offering: your subscription.

Here’s what happened when one of our creators did exactly that.

A successful food-focused creator with reach across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, a personal website, affiliate links, Shopify, and importantly, Patreon.

Up to this point, all Patreon promotion was organic. It was working, but growth had plateaued. The question was: Could paid media accelerate this business in a financially smart way?

We helped the creator figure out two key stats:

• Churn Rate: How long subscribers actually stick around
• Lifetime Value (LTV): How much each subscriber is worth over time, after fees

The data told us this:

• Average subscriber tenure: 11 months
• Net LTV per subscriber: $85 (after Patreon + transaction fees)

With this knowledge, we could finally make informed decisions about paid acquisition. We decided on a target customer acquisition cost (CAC) of under $42.50—half of LTV, to ensure healthy margins.

We hired a performance marketing agency and asked them to focus on audiences already familiar with the content but not yet subscribed: YouTube viewers, Instagram fans, etc.

We told them to spend only when CAC was under $40.

They did.

And the result? A meaningful, sustained increase in Patreon growth rate, with paid subscribers contributing strong LTV from day one.

You don’t need to be a spreadsheet whiz to use paid media effectively, but you do need to know your numbers. Churn and LTV are essential to understanding what you can afford to spend to grow. Once you have that, paid media becomes less of a gamble and more of a growth engine.

At Engine Room, we calculate and track these metrics automatically for you so you can see when your promotion has a positive effect (or, just as importantly, when it doesn’t move the needle). This means you can grow smarter.