When working on a double-sided marketplace how do you work out cost of customer acquisition?

I'm the CTO of https://3dagogo.com a marketplace of proven to print 3D designs.

We look at the two sides differently. There's not a single customer. In our case you have designers and purchasers ( sometimes the same person can be both ).

Cost and methods for acquiring designers are very different than those to attract purchasers.

I would clearly separate the sides and come up with separate cost structures.

In my opinion when you're looking at the marketplace from the purchaser perspective, the other side's acquisition costs can be seen as fixed marketing costs.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is calculated by dividing all the Sales and Marketing costs involved to acquire a new customer within a certain timeframe. To get your customer acquisition cost (CAC), divide all sales and marketing costs by the number of customers acquired over a given time period. CAC is an important metric for growing companies to determine profitability and efficiency.