How Do You Know How Much a Click Will Cost on AdWords?

So you want to try AdWords, but want to make sure you will get performance. You understand you need a high enough maximum cost per click to be in the auction and your daily budget needs to be high enough to support your maximum cost per click to get AdWords to serve your program, but how do you estimate for planning your cost per click to see if you can even afford AdWords?

Google AdWords has a tool that will allow you to see estimate cost per click figures. You can visit the tool here. If you have an AdWords account when you click the link, AdWords will send you to the tool page within your own account so you can benefit from your own account history. What I recommend with all new potential AdWords advertisers is to run a few keywords that they consider important to their business to get an idea of where the bid auction is to that an effective and practical monthly click budget can be set.

Make sure that when you use the tool that you select in the drop down menu for columns the “Approximate CPC”. Remember this is an approximate. In my experience is has even been on the low side. The figures you will typically see will be for the United States by default if you are in the US, but make sure that you are not seeing global results. You can reorder the data with your selections. The local search column is not to be confused with “local” like in your region. Local in this case means your entire country based on your initial tool settings.

Do not budget your AdWords program based on the numbers you see in the tool. Remember every chance you have for a click once your program is running will be based on an auction. The figures the tool gives you should be considered a range and the real costs will typically be higher.

Once you have an estimated cost per click, then factor in how many realistically priced clicks you want per day to try to achieve your marketing results. You may find out that your budget of $2,000 per 30 days you thought you wanted to spend will simply not be enough when your click cost may be $10 per click. Additionally you may have felt you wanted to run 6 ad groups but can realistically afford only two to run or you will parse your budget between too many programs.

Although AdWords says you can set your 30 day click budget and maximum cost per click to anything you want, they also have the option to not serve your program if your settings are simply not competitive in your marketplace.

For more AdWords help, make sure to visit our website to read about our AdWords management services.