CPC Calculator
Learn how t calculate your Cost Per Click (CPC). This metric is the average amount you pay for each click on your advertising. This metric helps you understand the efficiency and levels of engagement of your paid ads campaigns.
Managing costs are as crucial as ever within digital marketing. We need to always stay on-top of our costs and control them as much as we can. Rising CPC's can mean increased competition for the keywords/ad space you operate in, or it can mean your ads need further optimizations to improve efficiency.
Calculate Your CPC
Your CPC Result
Enter your cost and clicks to see your CPC
What is CPC?
CPC stands for "Cost Per Click". It represents the average amount you pay each time someone clicks on your ads.
Formula: CPC = Total Cost ÷ Total Clicks
CPC is a crucial metric for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns, helping you understand the cost-effectiveness of driving traffic to your website.
A rising CPC essentially means you will have less traffic for the same budget, or you might have to increase your budget to get the same amount of traffic as before.
CPC Benchmarks
*Benchmarks vary significantly by industry and targeting. I have seen Google ads CPC's as high as $100+ per click in some industries.
Tips to Lower CPC
Ensure your ads, keywords and landing pages are all relevant to the searches you are appearing for to Improve overall CTR. This will ensure you provide a good user journey which is key to reducing cost through PPC ads.
Longer tail keywords such as, 'means trail running shoes for ultra marathons', are less competitive compared to 'running shoes'. This means they offer a higher intent audience, and can offer lower CPCs as a result.
Some go down the route of creating bespoke landing pages just for your paid search campaigns, ensuring the content is highly relevant to the keywords you are targeting. This can help improve your Quality Score, which in turn can lower your CPC. A lot of these are connected as you will see.
Use negative keywords to filter out the traffic that is not relevant to your campaign. In an era of broad match types widening your search radius, you will need to conduct regular search term analysis to highlight any terms you do not want to appear for, or that are highly irrelevant to you.
Increasing your CTR signals to the platform that your ads are highly relevant which in turn will improve your quality score, reducing your CPC's. Make your ad copy engaging, provide a strong call to action and use extensions to improve your ads CTR.
Make sure you are targeting the right audience. Sounds very simple, but clear defined targeting will improve your CPC as they will interact with your ads more. Don't target middle aged men if you are selling womans size 3 shoes.
Keep testing and learning. I have experimented with Manual bidding recently and have found my CPC's lowered quite considerably. Traffic has reduced, however cost has reduced by a greater amount, ensuring more budget for other potential campaigns in the future.
Goes without saying. Make sure you are checking your ads regularly, or get someone to do it for you! There is always something you can improve on for your campaigns, whether it be something we have mentioned here, or something else, review and optimize consistently.
Common Bidding Strategies
Manual CPC
You set maximum bid amounts for your keywords, giving you full control over costs.
Enhanced CPC
Automatically adjusts your manual bids based on conversion likelihood.
Target CPA
Sets bids to achieve your target cost per acquisition automatically.
Maximize Clicks
Automatically sets bids to get the most clicks within your budget.