What is click-through rate (CTR)?
Click-through rate is a metric to calculate the number of times people clicked your ad, organic search result, or email vs. the number of times they viewed it (impressions). Most commonly, click-through rate is used to analyze the effectiveness of paid search, email, and display marketing efforts. Examples where companies typically measure CTR include:
- Landing page links
- Call-to-action buttons or links in an email
- Search result on a SERP page
- On-site elements like buttons, images, ad copy, etc.
How to calculate click-through rate?
To find out the click-through rate for your campaigns, you need to divide the total impressions by total clicks and multiply this number by 100. For example, if an ad generated 100 clicks and 7000 impressions, the click-through rate will be 0.7%
CTR: 7000 / 100 X 100 = 0.7%
Note that CTR is typically expressed as a percentage.
What is a good click-through rate?
The best CTR theoretically is 100%, but no digital promotion will ever come close to that. Search queries for brands can read 15% (this is when someone searches for your brand on a search engine and clicks on an ad that appears). Click-through rates for digital advertising are mostly under 1%, and the more you shift to display ads, the lower this number gets. It is not unusual to see CTRs of 0.1% in display advertising.
Why is click-through rate important?
In simple terms, the click-through rate is the indicator of the success of your campaigns. By measuring how many viewers end up clicking on your ad after watching it, you find out the strengths and weaknesses of your campaigns. Improving the click-through rate of your campaigns can be the easiest way of increasing conversions and generating more sales. To find out if you are doing a good job at display and search ads with email marketing campaigns or SEO, try making a side-by-side comparison of CTR with your industry averages.
How to optimize click-through rate?
Since CTR is one of the key steps leading to conversions, you need to optimize it to increase the number of people who convert. You can improve CTR by improving the overall performance of the elements it tracks, like images, lines, copy, keywords, and descriptions.
To get the desired results, you need to focus on each element individually and see its performance. Then you need to deploy industry best practices to derive the result you wish to achieve.
For example, writing power words in your ad copy like ‘exclusive,’ ‘hidden,’ or ‘lifetime’ is the best way to make people take action and click through to your landing page. To increase the CTR of email campaigns, avoid using phrases like ‘click here’ because it does not tell your readers anything about what is waiting for them when they click the link.
Spend time researching and studying the most powerful optimization tricks to learn more about Google Ads and Facebook ads. Once you perfect your strategy, you can bring more people to your online store.
Click-through rate strategies
When you spend money on advertising, you need to make sure that you are constantly working on communication elements to boost the outcome. Let’s look at some strategies that can boost your click-through rate:
Qualify your audience
The more qualified your audience is, the better your click-through rate will be. Tightly defining your audience can be a good way to improve return on investment.
Run ads at specific times
Your audience can be online and close to your message at particular times of the day. You can search for these times by measuring the CTR for each hour. When you tune down the campaign at low-performing times, the outcome will improve.
Write better copy
The better your message, the higher its impact on the target audience. Reviewing and constantly tweaking the ad messaging will give you the best recipe for success.
Improve your call-to-actions
If you want your ad to be clicked, you need an effective call to action in it. Ads putting in the bare minimum with the calls to action will not achieve high traction because it is not attractive for the viewer.
Try multiple ad variations
The best formula behind effective ads is to A/B test for success. After deploying several variations of your ads, see which one gets the most clicks. From there, your job becomes easier, and you can get more people to click. When the best ad comes forward, you can further tweak the iterations until you get the most clicks.
How to analyze your CTR?
There are several ways to analyze the CTR of your digital ad campaigns:
- Look at significant volumes of data that underwent a lot of viewership before you modify anything in your communication.
- Filter the CTR by time to see engagement for a particular period. Doing this is crucial because users can behave differently on different days.
- A paid search ad is not the same as a display campaign, and you cannot find meaningful information by comparing CTRs for both. Look at the same campaign when making comparisons, the same times, or the same communication channels for an apples-to-apples comparison result.