Free tool
PPC budget calculator
The enquiries you want each month, the share of clicks your page turns into enquiries and the cost per click you see, into the monthly and daily advertising budget that target needs and the cost of each enquiry. Then the other way round: what the daily budget you have in mind actually buys. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
The enquiries with no bill per click are the ones our SEO services produce.
The budget your target needs
- Clicks needed each month
- Cost of each enquiry
- Monthly budget
- Average daily budget
Why the budget comes from the target, and what moves it
Most budget calculators start from what a business can afford, a share of revenue or a figure that feels safe each day, and then hope. The account does not care what feels safe. It buys clicks at whatever the auction for your searches charges, and your page turns some share of those clicks into enquiries. So the budget a target needs is arithmetic in three steps: the enquiries you want, divided by the share of clicks that become enquiries, is the clicks you must buy; the clicks multiplied by the cost per click is the month's budget; and the month divided by thirty is the daily figure the account asks you to set.
Say you want twenty enquiries each month, your page turns three clicks in a hundred into an enquiry, and a click on your searches costs 2.50. You need 667 clicks, which is 1,667 for the month and about 56 each day, and each enquiry costs 83. Whether that is worth it is the fourth figure: if an enquiry is worth more than 83 to you, the account pays; if it is worth less, no bid strategy rescues it. The page prints that comparison when you type what an enquiry is worth, and says nothing about it when you do not.
Two figures move the budget and the bid is neither of them. The conversion rate moves it most: at three percent an enquiry needs 33 clicks, at six percent it needs 17, and the same target costs half. The cost per click moves it in proportion and is the figure you control least, because it is set by everyone else bidding on the same search. That is why the conversion rate calculator sits beside this one, and why the search enquiries that arrive without a bill per click change the arithmetic entirely.
The daily figure, and what Google does with it
Google Ads asks for an average daily budget, and its own help page on average daily budgets says that on days when more people are searching it may spend up to twice that figure, while over a month you are not charged more than the daily figure multiplied by the average number of days in a month. So the monthly figure on this page is the one to hold the account to, and the daily one is the setting that produces it; a day that spends double is not an overspend unless the month does. The second box on the form runs the question the other way, for the daily figure you were already considering: how many clicks it buys at your cost per click, and how many enquiries at your rate. When that number of enquiries is smaller than the business needs, the choice is a bigger budget, a better page, or the searches that cost nothing per click.
The figures on either side of this one
What a budget buys, run from the spend rather than the target, is the CPC calculator. What an enquiry is worth, and the most one can cost, comes from the cost per lead calculator. The rate that halves this budget is the subject of the conversion rate calculator, and where the advertising share sits in the whole is the marketing budget calculator.
Questions about a PPC budget
Is a small daily budget enough for Google Ads?
It depends on three figures of your own and on nothing else: what a click costs in your auction, the share of clicks your page turns into enquiries, and how many enquiries you need. Type the daily figure you have in mind into the second box and the page says how many clicks and enquiries it buys in a month at your numbers. A budget that buys two clicks a day at a two percent conversion rate produces about one enquiry a month, and no setting in the account changes that arithmetic.
What is a PPC budget?
The amount you allow the platform to spend on clicks in a period, usually set as an average daily figure. It is a ceiling on spend, not a promise of results: the clicks it buys depend on what each click costs in the auction for your searches, and the enquiries depend on your page. This calculator works backwards from the enquiries you want to the budget that needs, which is the order the decision should be made in.
Why does the platform spend more than my daily budget on some days?
Google states that on days when traffic is higher it may spend up to twice your average daily budget, and that over a month you are not charged more than the average daily budget multiplied by the average number of days in a month. Read the monthly figure this page gives as the figure to watch, and the daily one as the setting that produces it.
Where do I get the cost per click?
From your own account if you have run adverts before, or from the platform's keyword planning tool for the searches you would bid on, which shows a range. Use the top of the range, because the clicks that produce enquiries are the ones on the searches with the most competition. Published averages by industry describe other people's auctions.
Why is PPC so expensive?
Because a click is priced by an auction among everyone who wants the same search, and because most of the cost is not the click but the clicks that do not become enquiries. At a two percent conversion rate, fifty clicks are bought for every enquiry, so the cost of an enquiry is fifty times the cost of a click. Raising the conversion rate cuts the budget a target needs faster than any bid change, which is why the conversion rate calculator sits beside this one.
Is anything I type here sent anywhere?
No. Everything happens in your browser. There is no form submission, no analytics event and no network request of any kind, which you can confirm in your browser’s network tab.
Book a call with us
A 30-minute call in your working hours. Tell us what you sell and where, and we will tell you what we would do first and what it involves. Prefer email? Send your website through the form and the Passieon Team will reply within two working days.