Google Ads & PPC Budget Calculator
Builds a search budget forward from keyword volume, then prices the impression share the budget cap gives up at the marginal click rather than the average one.
Monthly searches 22,000
Clicks available to you 1,408 at 6.4% through
Budget $4,000.00
clicks it affords 1,039 at $3.85
What the month looks like
clicks 1,039
impression share you can cover 73.8%
leads 43.6 at 4.2% converting
customers 12.2 at 28% closing
spend $4,000.00
cost a lead $91.67
cost a customer $327.38
revenue $5,864.73
value a customer $480.00
verdict each customer costs $152.62 less than they are worth
What the budget cap costs
impression share lost to budget 26.2%
clicks you do not buy 369
customers you do not get 4.3
budget for full coverage $5,420.80 at today's cost a click
the marginal click costs more $4.81 at a 25% premium
so the extra coverage costs $1,776.00
and returns $2,083.15
worth doing yes: $307.15 more than it costs, even at the higher click price
If the estimates are wrong
a click at $2.69 1,408 clicks, 16.6 customers, $229.17 each
a click at $3.85 1,039 clicks, 12.2 customers, $327.38 each ← yours
a click at $5.39 742 clicks, 8.7 customers, $458.33 each
22,000 searches a month at 6.4% through is 1,408 clicks available.
$4,000.00 buys 1,039 of them, which is 73.8% of the demand that already
exists.
The 26.2% you cannot afford is the cheapest growth in the account,
because the searches have already happened. It is also not available at
today's cost a click: the cheap inventory goes first, which is what the
premium on the marginal click is for.
Keyword Planner volumes are rounded into buckets and averaged over
twelve months, so a seasonal term is understated in its season and
overstated out of it. Treat the volume as an order of magnitude and the
seasonality as a separate question.
Click-through rate on search depends mostly on position and on how well
the ad matches the query. The first position takes a large multiple of
the fourth, which is why a bid change moves traffic much more than it
moves cost.
Cost a click is not a fixed price either. It is an auction against
competitors whose budgets change, and the estimates Google shows are
estimates: plan at a range rather than a point, which is what the last
table is for.
The close rate is the part of this chain your marketing does not
control. A campaign that doubles the leads and halves the close rate has
changed nothing except the workload, which is why cost a customer is the
figure to hold people to rather than cost a lead.
Branded search deserves its own campaign and its own arithmetic. It
converts far better than everything else and it is largely demand you
already had, so blending it into these numbers makes the whole account
look healthier than the part that actually finds new customers.
Output is valid and updates as you type.
Fix the highlighted fields to update the output.
Search is the one channel with a known ceiling. There are only so many searches a month, only so many of them you can win, and only so many of those that click. So the budget is built forward from volume rather than backward from a revenue target, and it stops at the only figure that decides anything: what a customer costs against what a customer is worth.
The part most budget calculators skip is the cap. A budget smaller than the traffic available does not buy fewer clicks a month, it buys clicks and then stops, and Google reports the rest as impression share lost to budget. That share is the cheapest growth in the account, because the demand already exists and already searched.
It is not available at today’s price, though. The cheap, high-intent inventory goes first, so the marginal click costs more than the average one, and the extra coverage has to be priced at the marginal rate to be judged honestly.
How to use
- Put in the monthly searches for the keywords you are bidding on, the click-through rate you expect and the cost a click.
- Put in the monthly budget. The tool says how much of the available traffic it covers.
- Add the conversion rate, the close rate and what a customer is worth to get cost a customer, and set the marginal premium to price the coverage you are giving up.
Example
22,000 searches a month at 6.4 percent through, $3.85 a click, on a $4,000 budget:
Clicks available to you 1,408 at 6.4% through
Budget $4,000.00
clicks it affords 1,039 at $3.85
What the month looks like
impression share you can cover 73.8%
leads 43.6 at 4.2% converting
customers 12.2 at 28% closing
cost a lead $91.67
cost a customer $327.38
value a customer $480.00
verdict each customer costs $152.62 less than they are worth
What the budget cap costs
impression share lost to budget 26.2%
clicks you do not buy 369
customers you do not get 4.3
budget for full coverage $5,420.80 at today's cost a click
the marginal click costs more $4.81 at a 25% premium
so the extra coverage costs $1,776.00
and returns $2,083.15
worth doing yes: $307.15 more than it costs, even at the higher click price
If the estimates are wrong
a click at $2.69 1,408 clicks, 16.6 customers, $229.17 each
a click at $5.39 742 clicks, 8.7 customers, $458.33 eachRaising the budget by $1,776 is worth about $307 even after allowing a 25 percent premium on the clicks it buys. That is a decision, not a projection.
Pitfalls
Keyword Planner volumes are bucketed and averaged. They are rounded into ranges and smoothed over twelve months, so a seasonal term is understated in its season and overstated out of it. Treat the volume as an order of magnitude.
Click-through rate is mostly position. The top position takes a large multiple of the fourth, which is why a bid change moves traffic much further than it moves cost, and why a click-through rate measured at one position does not transfer to another.
Cost a click is an auction price, not a setting. Your competitors’ budgets change and so does it. Plan across a range, which is what the last table is for.
Cost a lead is a vanity metric when the close rate is low. A campaign that doubles the leads and halves the close rate has changed nothing except the workload. Hold people to cost a customer.
Branded search should be measured separately. It converts far better than everything else and it is largely demand you already had. Blending it in makes the whole account look healthier than the part that actually finds new customers.
Impression share lost to rank is a different problem. This prices the share lost to budget. Share lost to rank is a bid, quality score and relevance question, and more money does not fix it.
Full coverage is rarely the goal. The last few percent of impression share is the most expensive, and it is usually better spent on a second keyword set where the first click is still cheap.
Compatibility
Arithmetic in the browser: nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored.
Clicks are capped at what the keyword set can deliver, so a budget larger than the available traffic reports the leftover rather than inventing clicks, and the reading changes from “raise the budget” to “the keywords are the ceiling”. The test suite asserts both branches, since a calculator that keeps spending money on traffic that does not exist is the usual failure here.
The extra coverage is priced at the cost a click multiplied by the marginal premium, and its return is computed through the same funnel, so the verdict accounts for the premium rather than comparing the extra revenue against the average click price.
Cost a lead uses the money actually spent rather than the budget, which matters whenever the keyword set cannot absorb the whole budget.