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Free Service Business Calculator

COULD META ADS WORK FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

Add a few basic numbers to get a rough idea of the cost per lead your business may be able to support. It is a useful starting point, not a promise or a forecast.

A Few Basics

ADD YOUR NUMBERS.

Use normal averages. They do not need to be perfect, and you can change them as many times as you like.

£
The amount you would be comfortable spending on the ads themselves. This does not include management or creative costs.
£
Use a normal first purchase, project or contract value. Only use lifetime value when you have reliable retention data.
%
Roughly how much is left after the direct cost of delivering the work, before ads and wider overhead.
%
Out of 100 genuine enquiries, roughly how many normally buy? Use your real figure where possible.
Your Estimate
These example numbers may leave room to test.

Change any number to see how the estimate changes.

Approx. profit from one customer£1,250After direct delivery costs, before ads and wider overhead.
Rough break-even CPL£250The point where expected gross profit and ad spend are roughly equal.
More comfortable CPL range£125–£175A simple planning range at 50–70% of break-even.
Leads needed to cover ad spend8Based on your current close rate and expected profit per customer.
What that could look like

At a CPL of £125–£175, a £2,000 budget could buy roughly 11–16 leads. At a 20% close rate, that is around 2.3–3.2 customers. You would need about 1.6 customers, or 8 leads, to cover the ad spend.

This is a rough planning tool rather than a forecast. It cannot account for demand, competition, lead quality, sales follow-up, management fees, creative costs, VAT or sales tax, refunds, capacity or imperfect tracking. A real campaign needs room below break-even to be worthwhile.

Talk Through the NumbersHow I approach Meta Ads for service businesses →
Customer value matters

A business earning more from each new customer can usually afford to spend more to generate a useful enquiry.

Your close rate matters

Improving the way leads are qualified and followed up can change the numbers as much as reducing the CPL.

Break-even is not the target

The campaign still needs to leave enough room for overhead, management costs and a worthwhile return for the business.

How it works

HOW THE ESTIMATE IS CALCULATED.

The calculator first estimates gross profit from one customer. It then multiplies that by the percentage of genuine leads that become customers to estimate a rough break-even CPL.

The core calculationGross profit per customer × lead-to-customer rate = rough break-even CPL

The more comfortable range shown by the tool is deliberately below that ceiling. It is still only a planning estimate.

Read the full Meta Ads budget guide for worked examples, creative considerations and an explanation of how much lead volume may be needed.

A Starting Point

THE CALCULATOR ONLY TELLS PART OF THE STORY.

The next questions are whether the right audience can be reached, whether the offer is strong enough and whether the business can turn enquiries into customers. Those are the things that decide whether Meta is genuinely worth testing.

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