Click-through rate (CTR) is an essential metric for many businesses, it is a way to measure the attractiveness of your ads. If you’re sending out emails without knowing how you’re doing in this area, your business could be missing out on many great results.
A click-through rate (CTR), is the percentage of visitors that click on a particular link. For example, if you have 1000 visitors to your site, and 300 of those visitors click on a link within your article, your CTR would be 30%. Let’s find out what a good click-through rate is and how you can improve your CTR based on media channels or your industry.
Key Takeaways:
- If a keyword has a high CTR, it means you are driving the highest possible number of people to your offering.
- A good CTR depends on a number of factors that are unique to your advertising campaigns.
- A good CTR is something you want to strive for in every aspect of your business. If your email, website, or social media ads aren’t producing a good CTR, it can be an indication of poor-quality content. If your CTR is low, that means that your ad isn’t very convincing, and people are more likely to just keep scrolling past.
What Is Click-Through Rate (CTR) & Why Is It Important?
Click-through rate, or CTR in short, is measured by dividing the number of people who click your ad by everyone who sees it. Let’s say that 100 people came across your ad, and out of those 100, 10 people decided to click on it: this would make your ad’s CTR 10%. So in short, the higher the number of people who click, the higher the rate of your ad.
You may already get the gist of why it is important: a good click-through rate is a relatively simple way of calculating the relativeness and the attractiveness of your ad for a given audience. A low CTR could mean that your ad isn’t reaching its target audience, or that it isn’t really much appealing or persuasive. Having a good click-through rate is also important for search engines to rank your ad higher in search results, as they regard your ad as an appropriate answer for a given query.
So, a good CTR is important, as it can give you some important insight into whether you present your ad to the right audience, through the right keywords, or in the right place. However, it is not the sole indicator of what a good ad is. There are always other factors to consider (such as conversion rates and bounce rates), but for now, let’s start with sorting this one out first.
What Is a Good Click-Through Rate?
So here’s the thing: A good click-through rate is a vital element if you wish to have a foolproof e-commerce strategy, because it both determines and indicates a high search engine result. But there aren’t really any golden standards for a “good” click-through rate. Why? Because it’s all relative.
Think of it this way: A niche designer may have a CTR of 10% with 10 clicks out of 100 impressions, and a famous sports brand the same with 100.000 out of 1.000.000. Does this mean their ads are equally successful? We can’t really know for sure, because it depends on their business objectives.
At the end of the day, a metric is just a metric, and it cannot tell the whole story without the main goal in sight. Remember, not all ads are created equal, nor are the industries they compete in! In other words, for a CTR to be considered “good”, other factors must also be brought into the equation, such as industry information, ad platforms, marketing channels, and so on.
It is also important to note that marketing trends and techniques differ as the years pass, so you shouldn’t regard any average rates you find as set in stone. Remember to filter your research by combining the latest data, the relevant industry, and the preferred marketing channel. A good click-through rate is ever-changing!
What Is a Good Click-Through Rate for PPC?
Search engines decide the ranking of your ad through what is called a “Quality Score”. If your ad has a relevant keyword, a good click-through-rate, and the user has a good experience on the landing page, then it ends up higher on the results page with lower pay-per-click (or PPC) costs. So, because CTR is directly related to Quality Score, having a good click-through-rate can save you money by telling Google your ad is exactly what the users are searching for.
What Is a Good Click-Through Rate On Facebook?
If your target audience heavily uses Facebook, then examining the click-through rate of your Facebook ads is highly important. Data shows that the average CTR on Facebook is 0.9%, with different industries having different rates ranging from 0.47% to 1.61%. So as always, you should evaluate your ads’ performance with the industry your business performs in to make sure you actually have a good click-through rate.
What Is a Good Click-Through Rate for Search Ads & Display Ads?
In Google Ads, the click-through rates for search ads and display ads differ greatly, with search ads pulling the larger weight. The reason why search ads have a higher percentage of CTR is that customers search with the intention of buying, whereas they may not be interested in the display they come across yet. Recent research shows that the average CTR for search ads is 3.17% (ranging from 2.09% to 6.05%), whereas the average CTR for display ads is 0.46% (ranging from 0.39% to 1.08%).
Once again, the data indicates that a good click-through rate is highly variable from industry to industry. However, it also shows that focusing mainly (though not solely) on search ads could be the better strategy here, especially if you have fewer resources.
What Is a Good Click-Through Rate for Email?
As you might have guessed, a click-through rate in an email is not calculated by clicking on the email itself (aka. “open rate”), but rather by clicking inside a link in the email. When this is the case, calculating a good click-through rate for email works a little bit differently. Recent research shows that the average click-through rate for emails is 1.33%, which ranges from 0.66% to 2.29% across industries.
It is also found that different days bring different click-through rates, so the day you decide to send an email could also have an effect on the click-through rate you’ll receive. For example, Tuesdays have the highest click-through rate, whereas weekends draw the shorter straw. Mondays also seem to be the best day for the highest open rate, as people will tend to go through their emails that have piled over at the start of the week. So if you are keen on sending email campaigns, make sure to do them on the weekdays to achieve good click-through rates.
5 Tips to Improve Your Click-Through Rate
Use A/B Tests
The main goal of A/B tests is to decide which alternative works best. In the case of improving your click-through rate, doing an A/B test can help you eliminate the weak links in your ad mix. By deciding which ads have a higher click-through rate, you can advance your average rate to better your overall quality score.
Be Mindful of Devices & Browsers
Your ad may look perfect on a given browser or device, but what good would that do if it looks all jumbled and broken in other alternatives? Double the nightmare if those alternatives also happen to be what your target audience prefers. Yikes.
To avoid this threat, always make sure to test your ad on varying devices and browsers. This way, you can make sure your ad is in tip-top shape no matter what.
Rely on Better Visuals
Although humans rely on all sorts of inputs when making a decision, visual details have undoubtedly one of the highest rates of success for grabbing attention. When this is the case, it could be valuable to reevaluate how striking your ads are to the eye. You could try using different fonts, colors, images, etc., and decide which ones actually scream “click on me!” the most.
Emphasize CTA
We all know that advertising is a matter of convincing, and what better way to convince your audience than having a clear call to action (or CTA)? By emphasizing CTAs in your ads, you can have a stronger effect on your audience, which would then result in a higher click-through rate! However, don’t forget to make your CTAs relevant, since emphasizing an irrelevant action can’t exactly be expected to work.
Use Better Keywords
As the golden rule of search engine marketing, targeting the right keywords is of utmost importance. Your ad may look perfect and be super convincing for the right audience, but if it just gets lost in the endless sea of search results, it’s simply of no use. To make sure your ads land in the correct places, bid for the right keywords, blacklist unrelated ones, and explore different keyword options.
Choosing the right keywords may take some time, but they are worth the effort. To give some examples, you might consider using branded keywords, such as your competition’s. This way, your ad may pop up when a customer searches for your competitor, which could result in a change of heart!
You can also try targeting local keywords which will help narrow down the results. For example, if you are a hairdresser in California, targeting your keywords as “California hairdresser” instead of just “hairdresser” will get you better results and higher click-through rates.
Conclusion
A click-through rate is a straightforward way of measuring the effectiveness of your ads by calculating how many clicks they get when they are seen by an audience. Although a good click-through rate is only the beginning in the long journey of successful ads, it is an important start nonetheless. Improving your CTR could mean getting better rankings in search engines and reaching a broader or more accurate audience, thus helping you meet your business goals as an end result.
Don’t forget that there are many factors to consider when deciding whether a click-through rate is truly good enough. You should always count on other metrics to measure your ads’ success and evaluate them in accordance with your business objectives.
