PPC Budget Calculator.
How much you actually need to spend to hit your target conversions. The math agencies usually keep behind a Calendly link — drop your numbers in, get the budget out.
Sales, signed cases, demos, trials — whatever you count.
Clicks that turn into a conversion. Benchmarks: ~2–5% eCom, ~3–7% lead gen.
Pull from Google Ads, or use $1–3 eCom, $5–20 SaaS, $50–200+ legal.
AOV for eCom, case value for law, ACV for SaaS.
Numbers pencil out at a healthy ROAS. This budget is defensible to a CFO — build the plan.
How to read your number
The PPC budget equation has exactly three levers: how many conversions you want, the rate at which clicks turn into conversions, and what you pay per click. Fix any two and the third falls out by arithmetic — there's no negotiating with it. Most founders walk into media plans having fixed only the first one, then get surprised by the bill.
Where it goes sideways is the conversion rate. A landing page at 1.5% and one at 3% — same traffic, same product — produce budgets that differ by 2x for the same conversion target. Before you raise the budget, raise the page. We've seen eCom accounts go from 1.8% to 3.4% with a single offer rewrite (Wish Rock Relaxation), and law firm intake jump 697% on the conversion side (McEldrew Purtell). The cheapest click you'll ever buy is the one that was going to convert anyway.
CPC is the lever you have the least control over in the short term — the auction sets it. But Quality Score, ad rank, and negative-keyword discipline can knock 20–40% off an average CPC without touching bids. That's why our audit weighs Quality Score heavier than most: it's the closest thing to free budget in Google Ads.
One caution on this number: it assumes your conversion rate and CPC hold steady as you scale spend. They usually don't. Doubling budget tends to drop CVR (you reach lower-intent queries) and lift CPC (you bid into more competitive auctions). Treat this as a floor for planning, not a ceiling for performance.
Want a deeper read of your account? Get our 47-point written audit, five business days, no sales call.
