Advertising Budget Planner
The inverse problem to all calculators: not “what did I get”, but “how much money is needed to get so many leads.” With the layout by channels and checking whether there is enough demand in the niche.
Why is the budget calculated not from money, but from goals?
The conversation about advertising budget almost always starts on the wrong side: “We have 300 thousand, what can we do with it.” The answer to this question always the same - “anything is possible”, and it doesn’t mean anything.
A useful question is the other way around: how many deals does a business need, how many this requires leads, and how much those leads will cost in your niche. Then the budget is obtained as a consequence, and not as an initial condition - and you can immediately see if the goal is unattainable with any money.
How is it counted?
Three steps, each of which can be checked by hand:
- The target in the leads is distributed across channels in those shares which you asked. The shares are edited because the layout is correct doesn't exist: it depends on where you have your demand and base.
- Each channel has its own lead price. As a basis Here is the median of my range for the niche, and a channel correction is applied to it: search is usually cheaper than networks, retargeting is the cheapest, but it’s limited to the size of the base.
- Channel budget = leads × cost per lead, the sum over the channels gives total budget and average cost per lead according to the plan.
The Most Often Missed Check
The budget can be calculated for any purpose. Demand is not possible. Therefore the tool separately shows how many transitions need to be collected so that with a typical landing conversions to get the required number of leads.
If the resulting number of transitions in a niche is not physically collected, it is limited not budget, but demand. Increasing money in this situation does not generate leads, it gives an increase in the price of a lead: you start paying extra for the same audience. This is the most common reason why a media plan is not executed, and see it is needed before the start, and not at the end of the month.
What to do when the plan doesn't work out
| Symptom | What does this mean | Where to move |
|---|---|---|
| The budget turned out to be more than it is | The goal is not secured by money | Reduce the goal or increase the landing conversion - the second is cheaper |
| More transitions are needed than there is demand | It's the market that matters, not the money | Expand the audience, go into related demand, change the offer |
| One channel holds more than half of the budget | The plan is fragile: changing the auction resets the entire month | Split into channels even at the expense of the average cost per lead |
| Retargeting provides a significant share of leads | The plan relies on a base that may not be enough | Check the size of the database: retargeting does not scale with the budget |
About the numbers in this tool
CPL ranges and landing conversions here are mine, from practice, not industry statistics. That’s why the wording in the interface is about “my range”, and not about “market”: I can be responsible for what I saw in my projects, but I cannot responsible for the average temperature in the country.
Practical Takeaway: Use the Plan as a Starting Point for Conversation and as a way to catch an unrealistic target. As soon as you have your own two to three weeks of statistics - set your lead prices, they are always more accurate than any strangers.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from the CPL calculator?
Where does CPL come from by channel?
Why can channel shares be changed?
What does landing conversion check mean?
Can the same be true for B2B with a long cycle?
It is convenient to transfer the finished plan to media plan template - there is sheets for channels, monthly budgets and actual plan. And so that at the end of the month it was clear which channel brought how much, mark the links UTM generator.