Marketing ROI calculator
Use our simple calculator to see the real cost of doing your marketing yourself — and how much more you could earn by partnering with a dedicated agency team
Most businesses think of marketing spend as a straightforward line in the budget. But the true cost often runs deeper – taking up your time, tying up your team and slowing your growth.
At Blue Cactus Digital, we’ve helped organisations across professional services, events and membership platforms see up to 4–6x better cost per conversion when they trust us to run their campaigns. That’s because we bring together strategy, creative, SEO, social media and ad management under one roof, delivering faster, more effective results than most in-house teams can manage alone.
This calculator helps you understand:
- The hidden costs of doing it yourself, once you factor in your time and team resources
- How much more profitable your marketing could be with an expert, multi-skilled team behind you
- The additional revenue you might unlock each month – and how quickly that stacks up over a year
Try it now!
Fill in a few quick details about your business below. We’ll show you:
- Your current real cost per sale, including your time
- What your cost per sale could look like working with an agency
- Your potential additional monthly revenue
- How much time you could free up to focus on clients, product or growth
Where we’ve made assumptions based on experience
We’ve built this calculator on a few typical figures from businesses we work with at Blue Cactus Digital:
Cost per conversion improvement:
On average, we see around a 4–6x better cost per conversion once clients work with us. Before, many spend around £35.54 per conversion – afterwards, this drops to roughly £7.32. That’s because we test, optimise and run campaigns across multiple channels to reach your ideal customers more efficiently.
Hourly rate equivalence:
While your own hourly rate might differ, our average is £75/hour, but that covers a full team of experts – meaning work gets done faster and at a higher standard than with one in-house generalist.
Speed and multi-skill delivery:
A common reason businesses choose us is because they get instant access to multiple disciplines (strategy, SEO, social, ads, design, copy) without the delays or costs of hiring separate freelancers or training internal staff.
Why we’ve built this calculator
We’ve based this calculator on real figures from businesses like yours. From our experience:
Doing your own marketing is rarely free. Once you add up your hours (or your marketing assistant’s), plus ad spend, it often costs far more than expected – and grows slowly.
Our clients typically see a 4–6x improvement in cost per conversion. We achieve average costs around £7.32 per lead or sale, compared to £35.54 before they started with us.
At an average of £75/hour, you get access to a whole team of specialists. This means your marketing is not only more cost-effective, but also faster and more strategic.
