Should you be running Google Ads at all?

Four numbers decide it: what a job is worth, how many enquiries you close, how your landing page converts, and what a click costs. Put yours in. The maths runs in your browser and nothing gets stored or emailed.

Revenue from one won job or customer. Use first-job value, not lifetime.

$

Of the people who call or submit the form, how many become paying work?

%

Of the people who click the ad, how many enquire? Find it in your Ads account; a well-built local service page converts high single digits.

%

What a click costs in your category and area. Google's Keyword Planner shows the range for your exact keywords.

$

Cost per enquiry

$75.00

Cost per won job

$188

Revenue per ad dollar

$3.47

Break-even CPC

$20.80

These numbers support running Ads: revenue per ad dollar is strong enough to absorb real-world variance.

How to read the results

Cost per enquiry is what a phone call or form submission costs you at your click price and conversion rate. It is the number your landing page controls.

Cost per won job layers in your close rate: what you pay in advertising to win one actual job. Compare it directly to the job value.

Break-even CPC is the click price at which a job costs exactly what it pays. If real clicks in your category cost more than this, no amount of campaign tuning fixes the economics; the page or the offer has to change.

What moves each number

  • Conversion rate is the cheapest lever: a page that answers the exact search, loads fast, and makes contact effortless converts multiples of a generic homepage.
  • Cost per click responds to tighter geography, exact-intent keywords, and negative keywords, not to bidding harder.
  • Close rate is a business lever: answer speed and quote follow-up move it more than anything on the website.

This is the exact model we use to decide whether Google Ads management is worth proposing to a client, run before any budget is spent.

Calculator questions

Short answers about the model and where to find your inputs.

Cost per click comes from your Google Ads search-terms report, or Keyword Planner if you have not run ads yet. Landing page conversion rate is enquiries divided by ad clicks, from your Ads or Analytics account. Close rate and job value come from your own books: jobs won divided by enquiries, and average invoice for a first job.

Want a second opinion on your numbers?

Send us your current account or your calculator results. We'll tell you whether Ads is the right lever, and what we'd fix first if it isn't.

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