Free advertising tool
How much should you spend on Google Ads?
Work the budget out from what a booked job is worth instead of picking a round number. Tell it how many jobs you want, or what you plan to spend, and it shows the monthly budget, the daily figure to enter in Google Ads, and whether a lead will cost less than you can afford to pay for one.
Plan your Google Ads budget
Runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent or saved.
A decision about your margin.
From your call log or job list.
Middle of Keyword Planner's bid range.
A call or a form. Google calls it conversion rate.
Where the money goes each month
Spend
$4,000
Clicks
400
Leads
40
Jobs
10
Monthly budget for 10 jobs
$4,000
- Expected cost per leadCost per click ÷ clicks that become leads.
- $100.00
- Ad cost per booked jobYour limit is $400.
- $400
- Most Google can spend in one dayAnd at most $4,000 in a month.
- $263.16
How it is worked out
Work back from a booked job.
A plumber wants 10 more water heater jobs a month and will spend up to $300 in ads to win one. One in three leads books, and at $10 a click about one click in ten becomes a call or a form.
Most a lead can cost = $300 × 1 in 3 = $100
Expected cost per lead = $10 ÷ 10% = $100
10 jobs ÷ 1 in 3 = 30 leads = 300 clicks = $3,000 a month
Google asks for an average daily budget, so divide the month by 30.4: about $99 a day. The full reasoning, with Google's own wording for each step, is in how much a local business should spend on Google Ads.
The one test
A bigger budget cannot fix an expensive lead.
If a lead is expected to cost more than you can pay for one, more budget only buys more leads at a loss. Change an input first: advertise a service worth more per job, book more of the leads you get by answering every call, or send clicks to a page built for that one service so more of them call.
The lead value calculator works out the most you can pay per lead from your margin and sales steps, if you would rather start from there than from a figure per job.
Small budgets
Under about 30 leads a month, bid for clicks first.
Google recommends judging a Smart Bidding strategy over a period with at least 30 conversions, such as a month or longer, and advises building conversion data on Maximize clicks or Manual CPC first. If the budget buys fewer than about 30 leads a month, start there and put all of it on one service in one area, so each month says something about what is working.
Pricing a click
Plan near the middle of Keyword Planner's range.
Keyword Planner shows a top of page bid range for each search. Google describes the low end as roughly the 20th percentile of what advertisers bid and the high end as roughly the 80th, over the last 30 days. A budget planned on the low end runs out of clicks early, and you usually pay less than your bid, so the middle is a cautious price. After a month, redo the plan with your campaign's real average cost per click.
Google treats the daily figure as an average. Most campaigns can spend up to twice it on a busy day, and never more than 30.4 times it in a month, which is why the plan shows both.