Strategy - 4 min read - Updated
How much to spend on Google Ads, from your own numbers
No benchmark knows your market. Your budget follows from three of your own numbers: the conversions you want, what a click costs you, and how many clicks convert.
Your budget, from three of your numbers.
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What a click costs you
If the account has run, take the average cost per click of the campaigns you will fund, over recent months. If it has not, Keyword Planner estimates what advertisers have paid to show at the top of the page for your keywords, as a low and a high range: an estimate, not your price.
Where: Tools, then Keyword Planner.
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How many clicks become conversions
Your conversion rate is your conversions divided by your clicks, over the same period, from your own account. A new account does not know it yet: its first months of spend are how you measure it.
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The monthly budget
Monthly budget = conversions you want ÷ conversion rate × cost per click
Divide the conversions you want each month by your conversion rate: that is the clicks you need. Multiply them by your cost per click: that is the budget.
With an account history there is a shorter way: your cost per conversion (your cost divided by your conversions, over the same period), times the conversions you want.
If the result is more than you can spend, change the plan, not the formula: aim for fewer conversions at first, or start with the searches closest to a sale.
Where a budget goes wrong.
- Spread too thin. Many small campaigns, none with enough conversions for bidding to learn from.
- Cut too early. A campaign paused before it had the data to judge it.
- Capped where it sells. A campaign that sells is limited by its budget: its ads show less often than they could, while weaker campaigns keep spending.
The free audit checks this: C-10 Winners capped by budget, C-19 Visibility lost to budget.
- Nothing for the people who already came. No budget for the visitors and leads you already paid to reach once.
When to raise the budget, and when not.
Raise it in steps, and read the results after each step before the next one.
- The campaigns that sell lose impressions to their budget: the Search lost IS (budget) column says how often.
The free audit checks this: C-19 Visibility lost to budget.
- What a customer costs you is well under what a customer is worth to you, by your own numbers.
- The conversion rate holds from one month to the next.
And before any of them, check where the budget you already have goes: the causes of wasted spend, each with the check that finds it.
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We read your public pages and check whether your Google Ads tracking is in place. No account, no login, 30 seconds. Connecting is what shows the waste inside the account.
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In their words.
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Two more guides.
- Strategy What is a good ROAS? The one above your break-even No ROAS is good for everyone: work out your break-even from your own margin. 4 min read
- Optimization Wasted spend in Google Ads: 10 causes and their fixes The 10 causes worth checking first, each with its fix and the check that finds it. 8 min read
Find the waste before you add budget.
The free audit runs all 22 checks on your account and shows what already leaks, with what it costs where your numbers measure it, so the next dollar goes where it converts.
4.6/5 18 reviews (opens in a new tab) Rather have it run for you? Book the call. Managed by our team: $997 a month per account, for ad spend up to $10,000 a month (a quote above), no commitment.