How much do you need to spend on Google, LinkedIn or Meta Ads?
Answer six quick questions and get a monthly budget, your likely cost per lead and, most importantly, your cost per qualified lead. Every number shows how it was worked out.
In %. If you don't know, leave it blank and I'll use 30%, a common starting point for B2B SaaS paid search before lead quality is fed back to the platforms.
Your budget estimate
How this was calculated
How the calculator works
No black box. These are the same steps I use for a first-pass budget with a new client, before we have their own account data.
- Cost per click. A US baseline for your platform and industry, adjusted by a country factor, then converted to euro if you chose €.
- Clicks needed. Your conversion target divided by the typical click-to-conversion rate for your platform, industry and conversion type.
- Budget for your target. Clicks needed × cost per click, raised to the platform's practical minimum where one applies (LinkedIn needs around 10 clicks a day per campaign, and Meta needs around 50 conversions a week per ad set to leave the learning phase).
- Recommended budget. The target budget plus 40% room for testing keywords, audiences and creative while the account learns. Cost per lead stays the same. You get more conversions or more room to test.
- Cost per qualified lead. Cost per lead divided by the share of leads sales qualifies. This is the number that tells you whether paid media is working.
The numbers behind the calculator
US baseline figures for B2B SaaS. Your real numbers will differ with your offer, landing page, audience size and tracking quality, which is exactly why the first months of any account are spent replacing benchmarks with your own data.
| Platform / industry | Avg. CPC | Click → lead | Click → trial | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads (Search) | ||||
| SaaS / software | $11.00 | 2.8% | 4.8% | $393 |
| Cybersecurity | $28.00 | 2.5% | 3.2% | $1120 |
| Fintech | $15.00 | 1.8% | 3% | $833 |
| Marketing technology | $11.50 | 3% | 5% | $383 |
| Publishing software | $7.50 | 3.2% | 5.5% | $234 |
| LinkedIn Ads | ||||
| SaaS / software | $15.00 | 3% | 4.5% | $500 |
| Cybersecurity | $22.00 | 2.5% | 3.5% | $880 |
| Fintech | $20.00 | 2.2% | 3.2% | $909 |
| Marketing technology | $16.00 | 3% | 4.5% | $533 |
| Publishing software | $11.00 | 2.8% | 4.2% | $393 |
| Meta Ads | ||||
| SaaS / software | $3.80 | 2.3% | 4% | $165 |
| Cybersecurity | $5.50 | 1.8% | 2.5% | $306 |
| Fintech | $4.80 | 1.8% | 3% | $267 |
| Marketing technology | $3.60 | 2.5% | 4.2% | $144 |
| Publishing software | $2.80 | 2.7% | 4.8% | $104 |
Ad budgets for B2B SaaS, answered
How much should a B2B SaaS company spend on LinkedIn Ads?
Enough for each campaign to get around 10 clicks a day, or LinkedIn's algorithm struggles to optimise. With B2B SaaS cost per click usually between $11 and $22 in the US, that's roughly $3,300 to $6,600 a month per campaign before you think about your lead target. Narrow ABM or account-list audiences often cost two to four times more per click.
Is there a minimum budget for Google Ads?
There's no hard minimum. Maximise Conversions can work from the first day, but bidding gets more stable once a campaign has a steady flow of conversions, roughly 30 or more a month. Splitting a small budget across many campaigns is the most common mistake: each one ends up with too little data to learn from.
Why does cost per qualified lead matter more than cost per lead?
Because a cheap lead that sales rejects isn't cheap. If 30% of your leads qualify, a €150 lead is really a €500 qualified lead. Feeding lead quality from your CRM back to the ad platforms is how you push that share up. On one account I manage, the qualified-to-lead rate went from about 31% to about 56%. Read the case study.
Can I trust these numbers?
As a starting point for planning, yes. As a forecast, no. Benchmarks can't know your offer, your landing page or whether your conversion tracking is accurate. If you're not sure your tracking is right, fix that first with a Tracking Audit & Setup, because every budget decision depends on it.