Allowable cost per enquiry calculator

Find the most you can afford to pay for one enquiry and still make a profit — using your own numbers, not an industry average.

Most service businesses judge Google Ads by the cost of an enquiry, then compare it with an industry average that has nothing to do with their own margins. The only number that matters is what you can afford to pay for an enquiry and still make a profit. This calculator works that out from three figures you know.

How the calculator works

  1. Enter the average value of a customer: what one new customer spends with you, over the period you plan for.
  2. Enter your profit margin on that value, and how many enquiries it takes, on average, to win one paying customer.
  3. Profit per customer is value times margin. Dividing that by the enquiries per customer gives the most you can pay per enquiry before the customer stops being worth winning.

How to use the result

  • Your real target should sit well below the allowable figure, so that each customer still leaves a profit. Paying half the allowable cost per enquiry is a common, sensible target.
  • If your Google Ads cost per conversion is above the allowable figure, the fix is usually wasted searches and poor landing pages, not a bigger budget.
  • Recalculate when your close rate changes. Better follow-up on enquiries raises the allowable cost more than any bidding change.

Questions we get asked

What counts as an enquiry?

A form submission, call or chat from a genuine prospect. Job seekers, suppliers and people looking for something free are not enquiries, and blocking those searches lowers your cost per enquiry directly.

I do not know my enquiries-per-customer figure. What should I use?

Count last quarter: enquiries received divided by customers won. If you have no records, 4 is a realistic starting point for local services; adjust once you have three months of data.

How does this relate to Google's target CPA?

Target CPA is the figure you tell Google to aim for. Set it from this result, below the allowable cost, rather than from what the account happened to achieve last month.

Want this checked for you every day? See the 17 checks Ads Toolbox runs on a connected Google Ads account.