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“Let’s test with a few hundred euros and see”: that is often paying to learn what the market already knew. Before the first click, search data tells you how many people look for what you sell, where, in which language, and what the top of the page costs. This guide shows how to turn that into a defensible budget; it complements our articles on online advertising.
In short
Search volume, bid ranges and click forecasts can be read before the first spend, by country, language and city.
Those figures give a budget range, a target cost per lead and a list of queries to buy or leave.
They are estimates: a short test checks them before committing the budget.
What the market tells you before your first euro
Google’s Keyword Planner shows, for each query, four pieces of information useful to anyone who has to decide a budget:
- Average monthly searches: how often the query and its close variants are typed, over the chosen area and period.
- Top-of-page bid, low and high range: what advertisers had to pay to appear at the top of the first page. According to Google, these are approximate values, drawn from the lowest bids for the low end and the highest for the high end.
- Competition (low, medium or high): the number of advertisers bidding on the query, compared with all keywords.
- Forecasts: estimated clicks, impressions and cost for a group of queries, based on the bid and budget you enter.
the period over which search volume is averaged by default
the bidding period behind the top-of-page ranges
Watch the “Competition” column: it measures the fight between advertisers, not how hard it is to rank in organic results.
By country, by language, by city
The same word doesn’t cost the same in Lyon, Geneva or Montreal. The tool can be set to a country, a region or a city, and to a language, according to Google’s page on keyword research. Set it to where you actually deliver, not the whole country by default: it is the same logic as for SEO, where Google doesn’t show the same results from one city to the next.
Two caveats, written by Google. Volumes are rounded, and those of several areas don’t always add up. And the smaller the area, the less precise the estimate: for a mid-sized city, read an order of magnitude, not a counter.
From figures to budget
One figure is missing that only you know: the share of your site’s visitors who send a request. With it, the calculation takes four steps.
From search data to budget
- Volume
Monthly searches for buying queries, in your area and language.
- Clicks
What the forecasts give for your bid and budget.
- Cost per lead
The price of a click divided by your conversion rate.
- Budget
The number of requests you want, multiplied by that cost.
An example with made-up figures, the arithmetic: if a query’s range goes from €1.50 to €4 and 3% of your visitors send a request, you need about 667 clicks to get 20 requests, so a budget between roughly €1,000 and €2,700. The cost per lead then sits between €50 and €133. If a lead must not cost you more than €80, the query is profitable only at the low end of the range: it goes into a test, not a full-throttle campaign.
The budget comes out as a range: the high end tells you what to plan for, the low end what you can hope for. The same reverse calculation, applied to social media, is detailed in our article on social media advertising budgets.
Queries to buy, and queries to leave
Costing helps you rule out as much as choose.
To buy
It describes a purchase: “provider”, “quote”, “price”, a precise trade name
Its calculated cost per lead stays under the ceiling you set yourself
It is typed in an area where you deliver
To leave
It looks for information, training or a job
Its cost per lead exceeds what a customer brings you
It comes from an area or a language you don’t serve
Queries you leave aren’t lost: they become negative keywords. According to Google Ads help on negative keywords, they rule out nearby searches aimed at a product other than yours, synonyms and plurals included if you add them. Prepared before launch, that list saves you paying the first few days to discover it.
What the estimate doesn’t know
Costing describes the market, not your campaign.
Watch out
The final price is set on every search
According to Google’s page on ad rank, every search triggers an auction: an ad’s rank depends on the bid, but also on the quality of the ad and the landing page, the other advertisers and the search context (location, device, time). Two advertisers bidding the same can therefore get neither the same position nor the same price.
Three limits to keep in mind:
- A new account is estimated on the average. With no history, according to Google, a new advertiser’s forecasts rest on the average of all advertisers. A more relevant ad and page can do better, a slow or vague page worse.
- Volume and forecasts don’t count the same way. Historical volume only covers the exact query, while click and cost forecasts include the match types you choose.
- Competitors move. The ranges reflect the last 30 days: a new competitor or a season starting shifts them.
To understand those gaps, the Google Ads Quality Score rates three components from 1 to 10: expected click-through rate, ad relevance, landing page experience. According to Google, it is a diagnostic tool that doesn’t itself enter the auction.
The short test that checks the costing
Rather than committing the whole budget to an estimate, you check it against reality. The test checks a costed hypothesis, which is what keeps it short.
- Narrow down.
One offer, your delivery area, only the queries “to buy” and the negative keyword list.
- Measure before spending.
Every request must arrive with its source, and ideally what it becomes in the CRM, as shown in our guide to sending CRM sales back to Google Ads.
- Compare.
Put the real cost per click, conversion rate and cost per lead next to the costing.
- Read the real searches.
The search terms report shows the queries that actually triggered your ads: new buying queries join the campaign, the others join the negative list.
- Decide.
If the gap is small, the budget follows the costing; if it is large, fix the ad or the page before spending more.
Where to start
Start from a dozen queries your customers really use, your delivery area and your current conversion rate. If the search barely exists, the question becomes one of platform, covered in our Google Ads or Meta comparison for a B2B business.
Across several countries, several languages or a whole catalogue, costing by hand becomes a project. That is the starting point of our programmatic Google Ads offer: each query is measured country by country and city by city before the first euro, then campaigns are built on those figures and adjusted every week, on an account that stays in your name. When advertising has to work with SEO and lead tracking, the digital marketing in one piece offer takes over.
Frequently asked questions
Can you really estimate the cost of a Google Ads campaign without launching it?
Yes, as an order of magnitude. Search volume, bid ranges and click forecasts exist before any spend. They give a budget range, not an exact amount: the quality of your ads and your page, like competitors’ bids, set the real price.
Which cost per click to budget with: the low or the high end?
Both. The high end is for planning the budget, so you don’t run short of clicks while the campaign is learning; the low end says what a well-built campaign can hope for. The short test then tells you where you stand, and that real figure sets the next budget.
Are the figures reliable for a small town?
Less than for a country. Google warns that estimates are less precise for a small area, for lack of data. Group the neighbouring towns where you deliver, or read the figures as an order of magnitude that the test will confirm. A query missing from the tool doesn’t necessarily have no demand: it can be tested on its own.
Sources
- Google’s page on keyword research (new tab)support.google.com
- Google Ads help on negative keywords (new tab)support.google.com
- Google’s page on ad rank (new tab)support.google.com
- Google Ads Help, about Quality Score (new tab)support.google.com
- The search terms report (new tab)support.google.com
Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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