Demand Gen Budget Calculator
What a monthly budget actually buys, from cost per lead down to sourced revenue.
Most demand generation proposals are priced in deliverables: campaigns, content, a dashboard, a monthly call. None of that tells you what the retainer buys. This calculator does, in the only currency that matters at a budget meeting: leads, MQLs and qualified opportunities per month, what each one costs, and, once you add a win rate and deal size, the wins, sourced revenue, blended CAC and pipeline value that budget produces. Run it on the numbers in the agency's own proposal before you sign anything, then run it again on your last quarter of actuals. If the two disagree wildly, you have just found the conversation worth having on the next call.
How to price a demand gen program before you commit to it
- Make the agency quote a cost per opportunity, not a cost per lead. Leads are a volume metric anyone can hit; opportunities are the first number your sales team recognizes.
- Ask which conversion rates the proposal assumes and where they came from. Rates borrowed from another client in another category are the most expensive assumption in the deck.
- Put the retainer inside the model, not beside it. Fees, ad spend, content production and tooling all belong in the budget line, or your cost per opportunity is fiction.
- Check the sales cycle before you judge month three. A program selling into a four month cycle has produced no revenue by then and can still be working exactly as designed.
- Compare blended CAC against the gross profit a customer returns in year one. If acquisition costs more than that, the program needs a different channel mix, not a bigger budget.
- Agree what counts as an MQL in writing on day one. Half of all agency disputes are two definitions of the same word, discovered somewhere around month four.
Example output
Budget / CPL / conversion rates / deal size: $25,000 a month, $85 cost per lead, 30% lead to MQL, 25% MQL to opportunity, 22% win rate, $24,000 average deal
Leads: 294 a month at $85 cost per lead. MQLs: 88 at a lead to MQL rate of 30%, $283 each. Opportunities: 22 at an MQL to opportunity rate of 25%. Cost per opportunity: $1,133. Wins: 4.9 a month at an opportunity to win rate of 22%, about 58 a year. Sourced revenue: $116,471 a month, at an average deal size of $24,000. Blended CAC: $5,152 per customer. Sourced pipeline: $529,412 of opportunity value created a month. Every $1 of budget returns $4.66 of new revenue at these rates, before you subtract the cost of delivering it.
Frequently asked questions
- What does a demand generation agency do?
- A demand gen agency runs the programs that create and capture demand: paid media, content, SEO, email, webinars and landing pages, usually with attribution reporting layered on top. The good ones are measured on qualified opportunities and sourced pipeline. The rest report impressions, clicks and raw lead counts, which is how a retainer stays comfortable while pipeline does not move.
- What should demand gen cost?
- Retainers vary enormously by scope, channel mix and market, and anyone quoting a single going rate is guessing, which is precisely why this calculator exists. Model each proposal down to cost per opportunity and blended CAC on your own numbers, then judge those against the gross profit one customer actually returns to you.
- What is the difference between demand gen and lead gen?
- Lead gen is the capture half: forms, gated assets and lists of contacts, counted in volume. Demand gen is the whole system that makes people want the category and you inside it, then captures them when they are ready to move. Lead gen without demand gen fills a CRM with names who never asked for anything.
- Why is this free, and what's the catch?
- No catch and no signup. This tool is funded by EaseClaw, an AI agent that finds warm buyers on LinkedIn, reaches out for you and books the meetings. If the free tool is useful, some people try the free trial. That's the whole business model.