ResourceReference

The Prop Firm Marketing & Growth Glossary

Plain-English definitions for prop-firm marketing and growth — the acquisition, economics, conversion, retention, and measurement terms that decide whether a program scales or stalls. Jump by topic, scan A–Z, or read top-to-bottom.

Acquisition

5 terms

CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)Acquisition: The total marketing cost to acquire one customer. For prop firms the number that actually matters is funded-trader CAC, not cost per sign-up.
CPL (Cost Per Lead)Acquisition: Ad spend divided by leads or sign-ups. Cheap and easy to track, but a low CPL can hide an expensive funded-trader CAC if that traffic rarely funds.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)Acquisition: Revenue generated per dollar of ad spend. Judge it on revenue that actually materializes — funded and net of refunds — not platform-reported purchase value.
CTR (Click-Through Rate)Acquisition: The share of impressions that result in a click. A diagnostic for creative and targeting, not a revenue metric on its own.
CPC (Cost Per Click)Acquisition: Ad spend divided by clicks. Useful for comparing traffic cost, but downstream conversion decides whether cheap clicks are actually valuable.

Prop-firm economics

8 terms

Challenge purchaseProp-firm economics: A trader buying an evaluation challenge. The first revenue event in the prop-firm funnel — but not yet a funded customer.
Challenge phaseProp-firm economics: The evaluation period where a trader must hit profit and risk targets to become funded. Its economics — pass rate, fee revenue, time to funded — underpin CAC modeling.
RetakeProp-firm economics: A repeat challenge purchase after a failed evaluation. Retakes are a meaningful revenue stream and a high-intent re-engagement opportunity.
Funded traderProp-firm economics: A trader who has passed evaluation and is trading firm capital. Funded-trader volume is the real acquisition KPI; sign-ups and purchases are intermediate signals.
Funded-trader CACProp-firm economics: The fully-loaded cost to acquire one funded trader: total acquisition spend divided by funded traders. The metric that governs whether paid spend compounds.
Pass rateProp-firm economics: The share of challenge attempts that reach funded status. Driven by evaluation difficulty and trader quality — marketing changes the mix of traders, but pass rate is not primarily a marketing lever.
PayoutProp-firm economics: A withdrawal paid to a funded trader from firm profits. Payout frequency and size are the cost side of the funded-trader relationship.
Payout liabilityProp-firm economics: The expected outflow from funded traders hitting payout thresholds. Honest ROAS nets payout liability against revenue; anything else overstates the economics.

Conversion

4 terms

CVR (Conversion Rate)Conversion: The share of visitors — or of a prior funnel stage — who complete the next step. The core lever in conversion-rate optimization.
Checkout abandonmentConversion: Users who begin a challenge checkout but don't complete it. A common and fixable leak between intent and purchase.
Landing-page conversionConversion: The share of landing-page visitors who take the desired action. For prop firms, trust signals and offer clarity move it as much as copy does.
AOV (Average Order Value)Conversion: Average revenue per purchase. Rises with higher challenge tiers, add-ons, and retakes — a lever on revenue that doesn't require more traffic.

Retention

3 terms

Repeat purchase rateRetention: The share of customers who buy again — retakes, higher tiers, new challenges. A direct input to lifetime value.
ReactivationRetention: Bringing lapsed or failed-evaluation traders back into the funnel, usually through lifecycle email and SMS. The highest-intent re-engagement audience a prop firm has.
LTV (Lifetime Value)Retention: Total net revenue a customer produces over their relationship. Compared against CAC to judge whether acquisition is profitable.

Measurement

5 terms

AttributionMeasurement: Assigning credit for a conversion to the channels and touchpoints that drove it. Accurate attribution is what lets you compare channels on the revenue they actually produced.
Server-side trackingMeasurement: Sending conversion events from your own server rather than the browser, so events aren't lost to iOS, Safari, or ad blockers.
CAPI (Conversions API)Measurement: The server-to-server method for sending conversion events to platforms like Meta and Google, closing the gap left by browser pixels.
Assisted conversionMeasurement: A touchpoint that contributed to a conversion without being the last click. Under-counting assists makes upper-funnel channels look worse than they are.
IncrementalityMeasurement: The additional conversions a channel actually caused, versus ones that would have happened anyway. The honest test of whether spend is adding value.

Platform & policy

2 terms

Account continuityPlatform & policy: The ability to scale an ad account over long periods without suspensions or material policy actions. For trading offers, it's the ceiling on growth.
Policy posturePlatform & policy: How an account's creative, landing pages, and tracking stand against the platform's financial-services policies. Most suspensions trace to policy posture, not bidding.

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