There is no good cost per click. There is only a cost per click you can afford, and working out which one that is takes two numbers you probably already have.
Take your conversion rate and your customer value. If a hundred clicks make three leads, and one lead in four becomes a customer worth two thousand, those hundred clicks are worth fifteen hundred to you. Fifteen dollars a click is break even and anything under it is profit.
If you moved your bids towards searches with clear buying intent, your cost per click goes up and your cost per lead goes down. The account looks more expensive and is making more money. Judging on cost per click alone punishes exactly the change you wanted.
Cutting bids lowers your average cost per click and takes you out of the auctions that were converting. Volume falls first, then leads, and the cost per click chart looks great the whole way down.
When your break even sum says so, and only then. At that point the fixes are cheaper clicks through better quality, fewer wasted clicks through exclusions, or a better converting page. All three beat bidding less.
This is teaching material and our own reading of public documentation, not advice for your specific account. Check anything important with your own specialist before you act on it.
Every article on this query answers with an industry average. Averages are the one thing that cannot help you here, because the same click price is a bargain for a law firm and ruinous for a coffee shop.
Here is the maximum you can pay per click and still break even, at a 30% gross margin. Find your order value on the left and your landing page conversion rate along the top.
| Order value | 0.5% conv. | 1% | 2% | 3% | 5% | 10% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $50 | $0.07 | $0.15 | $0.30 | $0.45 | $0.75 | $1.50 |
| $150 | $0.23 | $0.45 | $0.90 | $1.35 | $2.25 | $4.50 |
| $400 | $0.60 | $1.20 | $2.40 | $3.60 | $6.00 | $12.00 |
| $1,000 | $1.50 | $3.00 | $6.00 | $9.00 | $15.00 | $30.00 |
| $3,000 | $4.50 | $9.00 | $18.00 | $27.00 | $45.00 | $90.00 |
| $10,000 | $15.00 | $30.00 | $60.00 | $90.00 | $150.00 | $300.00 |
Two readings from that grid do most of the work.
A $50 order at 1% conversion affords fifteen cents a click. There is almost no competitive auction anywhere at fifteen cents. That business cannot buy search traffic profitably on a first purchase, and no amount of optimisation changes it. It needs repeat purchase, a higher order value, or a different channel.
A $3,000 order at 2% affords eighteen dollars. At that ceiling almost every auction is winnable, which is why legal, medical and B2B software tolerate click prices that look insane from outside. They are not overpaying. They are buying inside their limit.
The practical use is not the number itself, it is the gap. Compare your affordable CPC to what the auction actually charges. If the auction is above your ceiling, the fix is never the campaign: it is conversion rate, order value or margin, in that order of difficulty.
Method: affordable CPC = order value × gross margin × conversion rate. At margins other than 30% scale proportionally: at 15% halve every figure, at 60% double it. Repeat purchase raises the ceiling and is not included, which makes this the conservative version of the number.
Run the calculator, then tell us what it showed. We reply with what to fix first and why. No call, no pitch.
Anything unfamiliar above is defined in the Google Ads glossary. Three accounts taken apart, ending with the money, are in the case studies, and the longer pieces are on the blog.
A click price only means something next to your order value. The break-even grid in is Google Ads worth it shows the conversion rate each combination demands.