Ad budget calculator
Below a certain budget, Google and Meta never get enough data to learn. This works out where that line is for you.
Your numbers
Three inputs. Everything updates as you type.
What you need
Why 30 conversions?
Smart bidding is a learning system. Like any learning system, it needs enough examples before its guesses beat random. Google's own guidance points at roughly 30 conversions in 30 days per campaign.
Below that, three things happen and all of them cost you money: bids stay jumpy, your cost per result swings week to week, and you cannot tell a real trend from noise — so you start changing things at random, which resets the learning again.
The cheapest lever is not the budget
Look at the last line of the results. Doubling your conversion rate halves the budget you need for the same number of leads.
Going from a 3% page to a 6% page is normal work — a clearer headline that matches the ad, the form higher up, fewer distractions. Doubling your ad budget is a permanent monthly cost. One of those is a much better deal, and most people reach for the wrong one.
If the number is more than you have
- Narrow the area. One city instead of a whole region concentrates the same money into enough volume to learn from.
- Narrow the service. Advertise your highest-margin service only. Fewer keywords, higher intent, cheaper clicks.
- Fix the page first. See above — it is the cheapest lever and almost nobody pulls it first.
- Try Meta instead. Cheaper traffic and lower intent, but at small budgets a well-built Meta campaign often beats an underfed search campaign.
What not to do
Do not split a small budget across Google and Meta so that neither reaches its learning threshold. Two half-fed campaigns perform worse than one properly fed one, every single time. Pick the channel that matches how people look for what you sell, get it working, then expand.
Common questions
Can I start smaller and scale up?
You can, as long as you treat the first month as data gathering rather than a fair test. What does not work is starting small, judging it in week two, and deciding the channel is broken — that is the most common and most expensive mistake.
Is the 30-conversion rule per campaign or per account?
Per campaign, and more precisely per bid strategy. That is exactly why running six campaigns on a small budget does so much worse than running one: you split your data into six piles and none of them is big enough to learn from.
What counts as a conversion?
Start with leads, because the volume is high enough to learn from. Once you have steady volume, import closed sales from your CRM so the system optimises for leads that actually bought, not just forms that got filled in.
Want this checked on your real account?
A tool can only work with the numbers you give it. If you want someone to look at what is actually happening in your ad account, the first conversation is free.
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