Your complete introductory guide to client PPC budgeting like a pro

If you’re managing PPC campaigns for clients, one of the first questions they’ll likely ask is, “How much will this cost me?” It’s a fair question, and if you want to land (and keep) clients, you need a better answer than “It depends.”

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Whether you’re managing PPC budgets and campaigns on your own or using a white-label PPC service for agencies, you need to understand the ins and outs of PPC budgeting so you can get the most out of your clients’ campaigns. Let’s dive in.

How much budget do you need to start a PPC campaign for a client?

If you’re looking to build a budget to start a PPC campaign for a client, expect to spend $15,000-20,000 monthly. The average CPC for keywords across industries is $2-4 (WordStream).

Not every client or company is going to want to allocate that much to their PPC budget, and a variety of factors including their advertising goals, what others in the industry are doing, and the target audience size. You can always start with a smaller budget and work your way up while testing and optimizing. If you can prove the ROI with a smaller campaign, you’ll be able to make the case for increasing the spend.

If you’re offering general marketing as well as PPC support, these low-cost marketing techniques can also help keep the budget down so you can allocate more to your PPC budget. While you’re looking at other ways to service your clients, you can also package PPC and SEO management together to scale your business without needing to find new clients. (And yes, you should consider offering local SEO to clients if you’re offering digital marketing services.)

Budget types to consider with PPC advertising

1. Daily budget

In your paid search budget, the daily budget simply refers to the maximum amount you (or your client) is willing to spend on the campaign on any given day. When setting a daily CPC budget, consider the campaign goals, what competitors are doing, and your target audience. Also factor in your marketing budget as a whole, the average cost per click, and your expected CTR (click-through rate).

The platform, such as Google Ads or Facebook Ads, will continuously monitor your ad spend throughout the day and will no longer show your ads when you hit your budget.

2. Monthly budget

Similar to a daily budget, a monthly PPC budget limits the amount of spend allocated to your campaign over a month. By spreading the budget out over a longer period of time, there is more flexibility when it comes to variables like daily traffic or differences in weekend versus weekday performance.

The ad platforms still monitor and control the amount of spend to keep costs within your set limit. You can monitor and make changes throughout the month to optimize and effectively manage the campaign, moving the budget where you need it.

3. Campaign-level budget

Instead of time-boxing your PPC campaign cost, you can set limits to a particular campaign. This works if you have a lot of different campaigns running at the same time and you want to be specific about where to allocate spend against each individual campaign.

For example, this tactic would be beneficial if you’re working on multiple marketing initiatives or have different products or categories. You could allocate more of your budget towards your higher-value categories to ensure you’re getting the highest possible ROI from your PPC budget.

4. Lifetime budget

If you’re setting up a time-limited campaign or promotion that ends on a specific date, you can set a lifetime budget to manage your PPC campaign cost. The platform will evenly spread your budget across the duration of the campaign.

No matter the length of the campaign, you should monitor, adjust, and optimize to improve performance throughout.

5. Shared budget

A shared PPC campaign budget means you can group multiple campaigns within your account and split the budget between them. The platform will allocate the budget dynamically based on how the campaigns are performing and your goals and priorities. If certain campaigns are performing well, more budget will be allocated there to improve ROI for your clients.

6. Accelerated budget

An accelerated PPC is just what it sounds like: it sets an aggressive pace to spend the daily budget and may also include an increased daily PPC budget. This can be useful if you want to reach a larger audience in a short period of time.

Accelerated budgets prioritize speed of delivery, meaning your ads will be shown as soon as possible. This can mean your budget will be spent earlier in the day, with the goal of generating higher impressions and click-through rates.

7. Dynamic budget

A dynamic budget allows you to automate PPC budgeting with set rules so the platform automatically adjusts spend based on things like day or time, campaign performance, and other competitors’ bids.

This type of budget is generally used in larger PPC campaigns with potential variations in performance so you can respond quickly by monitoring and optimizing your ads.

As you’re reviewing budget options for your clients, consider how a white-label PPC reseller program can open up new revenue streams for your agency. If you haven’t looked into it, this guide covers how a PPC reseller program can help your business.

How to calculate your client's PPC budget for their campaign

Step 1: Define campaign objectives

The first step in calculating your client’s PPC budget is determining what your campaign goals are. Work with your client to determine what they’re hoping to achieve: do they want more traffic, leads, or to increase sales?

It’s essential to work together on this because if you’re not aligned, you may spend time working on things the client doesn’t deem important, wasting time, money, and energy. Make sure you agree on what you’re working towards and include that in your reporting so they’re always aware of how your digital marketing strategy is growing their business. If you’re looking to simplify your reporting with PPC budgeting tools, white-label PPC reporting software can bring all your clients’ campaigns under one roof.

Step 2: Determine key metrics

Once you have alignment, the next step in your PPC budgeting is determining which key metrics you’ll report on to measure the success of your campaigns. Keeping your client’s goals in mind, you can report on metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per click (CPC), return on ad spend (ROAS), or sales lift.

You can even use a white-label PPC service for agencies to set up, track, and report on your campaigns (allowing you to scale your business by saving time).

Step 3: Conduct keyword research

To find out how much a campaign might cost, you’ll need to do some keyword research to dive into search volume, competition analysis, difficulty, and CPC for each keyword group. Once you’ve done that, you can group them into ad groups by theme or intent.

Step 4: Estimate clicks and conversions

Using your keyword research, you can make an estimate of the number of clicks and conversions you expect to receive. You can also use historical data on CTR and conversion rates, industry benchmarks for your client’s industry, seasonality, and competitive analysis to make your estimates.

Step 5: Calculate the PPC budget

Now you can make a PPC budget based on the information you’ve gathered. Take your estimated number of clicks and multiply it by the average cost per click. Then multiply the estimated number of conversions by the average cost per conversion.

Don’t forget to include your management fees and any ad platform fees. If you’re using a white-label Google Ads management tool, you can incorporate that into your management fees.

Bonus Tip: Start with a test budget

If you’re still not sure about the right paid search budget, you can always start with a smaller test. You can closely monitor the performance, refine and optimize your ads, and then scale up to a larger spend from there.

Things to keep in mind with PPC budgeting

1. Campaign Objectives: Always start with the client’s goals and make sure you get alignment. Depending on what their objectives are, your budget may need to be higher or lower. Plus, alignment means no surprises when you report on the campaign’s performance.
2. Market Competition: Knowing what your competitors and others in the industry are doing means you’ll have a strong understanding of which keywords are more competitive — and will require a more aggressive budget to own.
3. Target Audience: Get to know your client’s audience. Standard customer personas information such as demographics, region, and even which devices they use can impact your PPC budget.
4. Keyword Research: Knowing your keywords is the best way to estimate how much your budget might cost. Search volume, competition level, CPC, and difficulty all factor in. Different keyword groupings will have different budgetary needs.
5. Quality vs. Quantity: It’s not just a numbers game. All the clicks in the world won’t be meaningful for your client if the visitors don’t convert. Focus on a mix of quantity and quality to make your PPC budget work for your goals instead of just driving a lot of low-quality traffic.
6. Seasonality: Both industry-specific and general seasonality can drive demand. Keep an eye on trends around seasonality that could impact your client and factor that into your budget planning. Optimize spend for higher-volume times and pull it back during lower seasons.
7. Bid Strategy: Consider bid strategy in order to maximize your PPC budget. Try out different tactics, from manual to automated bidding or enhanced CPC and see which yields the best results for your campaigns.
8. Ad Performance Monitoring: PPC isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it marketing tactic. Continuous monitoring allows you to identify which ads are underperforming and constantly adjust and re-test. A PPC reseller program allows you to do this without spending all of your time in the weeds.
9. ROI Tracking: Monitoring key performance metrics is a key part of your PPC budget, and ROI is a definitive metric to track. Using metrics like CPC, conversions, and CTR, you can analyze the ROI and report back to your clients.
10. Flexibility and Agility: PPC budgets are fluid. As the campaigns go on, you will most likely need to reallocate and adjust your budget multiple times based on the data you’re collecting. Doing so can improve campaign performance, leading to better overall outcomes for you and your client.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I allocate my PPC budget effectively across different channels and platforms?

To effectively allocate your PPC budget across different channels and platforms, it’s crucial to understand your target audience. Knowing which channels and platforms they’re using means you’ll be able to market to them where they already are. Once you determine where to show your PPC campaigns, analyze channel performance and set campaign goals that make sense for your business. Once your campaigns are live, continuously monitor, test, and experiment to optimize your ads across the different channels to drive overall campaign performance.

How can I adjust my PPC budget to respond to changes in the market or competition?

Adjusting your PPC budget to respond to changes in the market or competition is essential for campaign success. Closely and continuously monitoring your key performance metrics, such as click-through rates, conversion, CPC, and ROI will allow you to spot any changes. Keep up-to-date on market trends and changes in the competitive landscape. Include regular budget reviews as part of your overall marketing strategy, and ensure you’re allocating budget to high-performing campaigns. Stay flexible and adjust your campaign copy and budget often.