Although Facebook is social media, running Facebook ads is an exercise in paid media. This means that your activities all come down to measuring dollars and cents, clicks and conversions, budget and ultimately ROI. While the Facebook Ads Manager gives you some information, it can be a complex affair to make sense of the figures and predict future campaign results before investing a single dollar. This is where Facebook ads cost calculators come into play.
What is a Facebook Ads Cost Calculator?
As the name implies, these simple tools allow you to calculate the costs of your Facebook ad campaigns. They’re readily available online, and all of them are free of charge. Still, if you’re looking for some better insights, we suggest using a more advanced advertising platform, but these calculators do serve their purpose as a simple way to calculate some basic numbers related to your campaigns.
The thing I love about these digital solutions is that they’re rather easy to use. All you need to do is insert a few metrics, such as your budget and target CPC, and the tools will tell you how many leads and conversions you need to break even.
Why Would I Want to Use One?
It’s worth noting that these programs basically work as glorified calculators, performing a few basic equations by comparing inserted metrics. Nevertheless, they can provide some clarity before the campaign and help you determine campaign objectives.
These tools are perfect for determining breakeven ROAS and how many leads/conversions you need to make a Facebook ad campaign work. Of course, this is only if we presume you’ll achieve these figures. The tools don’t account for common variations that always occur during paid marketing campaigns.
11 Facebook Ads Cost Calculators to Try Out
Over the years, I’ve used all sorts of calculators to predict campaign outcomes. Although these aren’t my primary tools, they can come in handy in certain cases when you need a quick conversion breakdown. Here are the tools you might want to try out.
Given that Hubspot is one of the most popular digital marketing platforms in the world, it isn’t surprising they offer an ad calculator. This nifty budget analysis tool is completely free, easy to use, and provides instant results. You even have an explanation for all these terms at the bottom, something that will help newbie advertisers.
A neat thing about the software is that it automatically calculates your advertising spend as you move the sliders. You can adjust five metrics, including an expected CPC, monthly budget, sales price, target conversion rate, and lead-to-customer rate.
On the right-hand side, you’ll see how the number of clicks, the number of leads, cost-per-lead, the value of a lead, expected revenue, and expected profit change with the change to the basic parameters. I like that Hubspot added links to relevant articles, which can teach you more about these key metrics.
While not as intuitive as Hubspot’s tool, Promo still gives you the breakdown of the more relevant performance metrics. It’s worth noting that this program is a bit more accurate as it includes a sixth factor.
You can adjust your revenue goal, expected profit, product cost, product price, percentage of leads, the percentage of users checking the sales material, and conversion rate. Interestingly enough, you can use this tool for other things besides measuring digital advertising costs. As it uses general economic metrics, you can discover the general value of qualified leads across different campaigns.
As for the outputs, you get the guestimate of the advertising budget, average cost per click, and number of leads required to reach campaign goals. The ads budget calculator works just fine, whether you’re measuring daily budget or lifetime budget. Like with Hubspot, these are just estimates, so don’t stick to them too much.
Madgicx is a comprehensive advertising platform that allows you to micromanage all your Facebook campaigns. The software allows you to find a target audience, create ads, automate advertising campaigns, and analyze competitors.
The Facebook cost calculator isn’t a part of the platform, and you can use it for free anytime. I like the fact that the tool makes a distinction between revenues and profits, giving you a bit more granular control. Madgicx also differentiates between daily and monthly ad spend, which is another nifty feature.
Business owners can adjust monthly revenue goals, average product price, Facebook CPM, click-through rate, and cost per customer acquisition. Then, the tool tells you how many sales and clicks you need to achieve your business goals. My favorite thing about the program is that it gives you a budget breakdown, including acquisition budget, retention budget, and retargeting budget.
Further Reading: Facebook Ads Cost: How Much Should You Be Spending?
Qwilr is a bit more complex than other entries and provides more insights. It calculates four main metrics, which are traffic volume, website conversions, customer value, and return on ad spend.
The traffic volume tab calculates your average cost per click and monthly budget. Based on that, the tool tells you how many clicks you can afford each month. The website conversion tab takes into account your average conversion rate and, based on that, shows you how many customers you can expect at the end of hte month.
The customer value section measures the average cost per purchase and number of transactions per person to determine customer value. Lastly, we have the return on ad spend category that takes into account all your previous inputs to determine your potential return on investment.
Plerdy is a website where you can find all sorts of tools for websites and social media platforms. The site features a return on investment calculator, TikTok money calculator, HTTP header checker, and numerous other solutions.
As for its Facebook advertising cost calculator, it’s somewhat similar to the previously mentioned Promo. Like all other entries on the list, the software automatically estimates the required campaign budget and how many leads you need to reach sales goals.
To use this tool, you need to input several KPIs, including the final revenue goal, required profit, price and cost of products and services, ads conversion rate (CR), and the number of prospects that will see the marketing material. While the tool isn’t that accurate, you can still use it to make informed decisions during an ads campaign.
Further Reading: How to Advertise on Facebook in 10 Easy Steps
Interestingly enough, OTT SEO is primarily a digital marketing service provider. Besides search engine optimization, the company offers social media marketing, reputation management, content creation, and other services. Somewhere along the way, the brand decided to introduce several nifty tools that would help website visitors.
The company’s solution is rather easy to use and intuitive. Similar to Hubspot’s calculator, this program automatically calculates results as you change inputs. Speaking of inputs, you can adjust required revenues and profits, product costs and prices, the percentage of visitors coming to landing pages and conversion rates.
OTT SEO tool tells you exactly how much your marketing investment should be. You can also learn how many actual sales you need, as well as how many qualified leads you have to generate with your ads campaign. Lastly, the tool also shows you the necessary customer acquisition cost (if you wish to reach your goals, that is).
Coefficient is one of my least favorite tools. The calculator is subpar compared to other solutions, mainly because of how it’s presented. You need to move sliders around to see all the data. Furthermore, Coefficient involves fewer metrics compared to other entries on the list.
The only saving grace is that you can open it in Google spreadsheets. Once you click on the link, you’ll also gain access to other calculators, which slightly makes things better. Still, the tool is much more complicated than it has to be.
Coefficient allows you to input ad impressions, ad clicks, cost per click, and cost per mile, after which the tool will give you projected Facebook ads cost. The thing I dislike about it is that there aren’t common metrics like cost per click or leads and sales required. Because of that, I suggest you try some of the other solutions.
Further Reading: What is the Facebook Ad Library and 13 Ways How to Use it for Facebook Marketing
An interesting thing about this particular tool is that the company named it “Cost per Result Calculator.” I think this makes sense, given that you’ll receive several outputs. Unfortunately, this calculator is subpar compared to some other entries, even though it offers a few interesting features.
Basically, the tool includes three separate metrics in cost, result, and cost per result. You’re only allowed to fill two boxes, and the program will automatically calculate the third. Alas, this basically makes it a glorified mathematical calculator that can only perform one equation.
It’s worth noting that the solution comes with a few other filters that allow you to choose your country and industry. You can also tell the program why you’re doing the calculation (measuring clicks, conversion, and leads). Still, none of these filters impacts the results, nor do they help your advertising efforts.
My Codeless Website gives us one of the best tools within this vertical. The company’s Facebook calculator is second to none, involving numerous input metrics and providing various valuable insights for campaign budget optimization.
First, the tool separates all input metrics into two categories: revenues and costs. Within the revenue section, you have revenue per product sale, sales page to add to cart, add to cart to conversion, and the percentage of checkout completions. This section tells the tool how many people have progressed through your funnel.
The second section includes cost per product, cost per click, daily ad budget, and number of campaign days. With this data, the software understands your costs and revenues. After inputting all this information, the calculator gives you ROAS, gross profit, net profit, on-page conversion rate, net profit per day, and other important insights.
Further Reading: The Top 13 Facebook Ad Tools You Didn’t Even Know Existed
Act360 is a digital marketing agency that does web development, design and media, and marketing and PR activities. As someone who often does Facebook projects, the brand often uses calculators and other tools to predict results and optimize campaigns. Among others, they offer website visitors a nifty tool for improving their bidding strategy.
The tool is rather simple but does its job. You can toggle between basic and advanced settings, the main difference being that advanced settings have two more filters. After setting the advertising campaign type (reach, page likes, and lead generation), you need to input the budget, as well as the minimum and maximum cost per click.
After pressing the button, you’ll receive the average number of conversions and the minimum and maximum number of conversions. Of course, the type of conversion will vary based on the campaign type you’re running. For example, the tool can calculate likes, reach, or conversions based on your presets.
Megaphone’s calculator has a few fantastic features that separate it from the other entries. I especially love the fact that it calculates campaign costs in dollars, Australian dollars, and British pounds. Although the figures and inputs remain the same, it’s still a small qualify of life improvement that foreign marketers will appreciate.
The calculator differentiates between sales and leads. The leads calculator includes metrics like Facebook ad spend, extra costs, CPC, and conversion rate. It also includes an additional section where you can input sales made, percentage of qualified leads, and estimated customer value. On the other hand, a sales calculator is significantly simpler, only including four metrics.
Once you insert all these figures, the tool will retrieve data for total visitors, total leads, cost per lead, cost per customer, cost per qualified lead, and estimated ROI. The great thing about Megaphone is that it gives you a breakdown of total incoming traffic, as well as a prediction of potential on-site conversions.
Further Reading:11 Powerful Facebook Ad Examples for Your Next Retargeting Campaign
Summary
With this software, you can learn what kind of revenues you can expect based on your marketing budget. Facebook ad calculators take into account various website conversions to predict your sales numbers and set a basis for a successful advertising campaign.
Hero Photo by Will Francis on Unsplash
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