Marketing & agency
Google Ads Cost Calculator
Estimates search advertising cost, where competition and intent set the price.
Result
Gross profit, not revenue, is what pays for advertising, which is why the net figure subtracts spend from profit rather than from revenue. A campaign with a healthy return on ad spend can still lose money at a thin margin. The landing page rate is usually the cheapest part of this to improve: doubling it halves your cost per job without touching the bid, whereas bidding more raises cost per click and leaves the funnel unchanged. Cost per click is not asserted here because it varies by trade, city and season by more than tenfold, and emergency service terms behave nothing like planned installation terms.
Get a Free Business AuditHow the calculation works
Clicks needed times the cost per click, derived from the customers wanted and the conversion rate. Search click prices reflect commercial intent and competition, which is why terms that signal readiness to buy cost the most and terms that signal research cost less and convert worse.
What moves the number
- Keyword competition and commercial intent.
- Quality and relevance as the platform assesses it.
- Match types and how broadly terms are targeted.
- Geographic targeting.
Where this one goes wrong
Broad match types reach more people and include searches with no commercial intent, which is how search budgets are consumed by clicks that could never have converted, and tightening the terms almost always improves cost per acquisition even as it raises cost per click. Add negative keywords and review the actual search terms, because what people typed is frequently not what anyone expected to be paying for.
Before you quote
- Review the actual search terms your ads matched.
- Build a negative keyword list and maintain it.
- Judge terms on cost per acquisition, not cost per click.
Questions
About this calculator
Why is search advertising expensive?
Because click prices reflect commercial intent and competition. Terms where someone is ready to buy cost the most precisely because they are worth the most, and the cheap terms are cheap because they convert worse.
What wastes search budget?
Broad match reaching searches with no commercial intent. Reviewing the actual search terms your ads matched is usually revealing, and a maintained negative keyword list is the single most effective cost control available.
Should I bid on my own brand name?
It is the classic incrementality question, since much of that traffic would arrive anyway. It can be worth doing defensively where competitors bid on it, and it is worth testing with a holdout rather than assuming either way.
The formula
clicks = budget / cost per click; enquiries = clicks x landing page rate; jobs = enquiries x close rate; profit = jobs x job value x margin
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Please keep the attribution line. It is the only thing we ask in return.
How to use this calculator
- Start from. Enter your own figure; the page starts at A monthly budget I have in mind.
- Monthly budget ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $2,500.
- Cost per click ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $8.5.
- Clicks that become an enquiry (%). Your landing page conversion rate. This is usually the cheapest thing to improve.
- Enquiries you win (%). Enter your own figure; the page starts at 35%.
- Average job value ($). Enter your own figure; the page starts at $950.
The result updates as you type, so you can try a figure, see what it does to gross profit from the spend, and change it back. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
A worked example
These are the figures the calculator opens with. Every number in the results column below is produced by the same calculation the page runs, so you can follow it through before putting your own figures in.
What goes in
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Start from | A monthly budget I have in mind |
| Monthly budget | $2,500 |
| Cost per click | $8.5 |
| Clicks that become an enquiry | 8% |
| Enquiries you win | 35% |
| Average job value | $950 |
| Gross margin | 45% |
What comes out
| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Gross profit from the spend main result | $3,521 |
| Monthly spend | $2,500 |
| Clicks | 294 |
| Enquiries | 24 |
| Jobs won | 8 |
| Cost per enquiry | $106.25 |
| Cost to win one job | $303.57 |
| Revenue | $7,824 |
| Return on ad spend | 3.1× |
| Gross profit after the ad spend | $1,021 |
$2,500 of spend buys 294 clicks, 24 enquiries and 8 jobs, worth $7,824 of revenue and $3,521 of gross profit. After the spend you keep $1,021. Each job costs $303.57 to win.
How sensitive the answer is
Holding everything else steady and changing only monthly budget, this is what happens to gross profit from the spend. It is worth knowing which of your inputs the answer actually hinges on, and which barely move it.
| Monthly budget ($) | Gross profit from the spend |
|---|---|
| $1,250 | $1,760 |
| $1,875 | $2,640 |
| $2,500 example above | $3,521 |
| $3,750 | $5,281 |
| $5,000 | $7,041 |
Every other input is held at the example value while this one changes, which is not how a real job behaves. Treat it as a guide to which number matters most, not as five separate quotes.
What each figure means
- Start from
- Choose from A monthly budget I have in mind, A number of jobs I want to win, Impression volume and click-through rate.
- Monthly budget ($)
- A money amount, between 0 and 1000000, starting at $2,500.
- Cost per click ($)
- A money amount, between 0 and 500, starting at $8.5.
- Clicks that become an enquiry (%)
- Your landing page conversion rate. This is usually the cheapest thing to improve.
- Enquiries you win (%)
- A percentage, between 0 and 100, starting at 35%.
- Average job value ($)
- A money amount, between 0 and 500000, starting at $950.
- Gross margin (%)
- A percentage, between 0 and 95, starting at 45%.
What the results tell you
| Result | What it is |
|---|---|
| Gross profit from the spend | The headline result. A money figure. |
| Monthly spend | A money figure. |
| Clicks | A number. |
| Enquiries | A number. |
| Jobs won | A number. |
| Cost per enquiry | A money figure. |
| Cost to win one job | A money figure. |
| Revenue | A money figure. |
| Return on ad spend | A number. |
| Gross profit after the ad spend | A money figure. |
Attribution is the weak link
Return and cost-per-lead figures depend on knowing which enquiries came from which source, and most home-services businesses do not track that reliably. If the source data is guesswork, so is the return.
Keep going
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