CTR Formula: A Quick Guide

With Google Ads, you can show the world what’s unique about your business and grab the attention of a specific target audience. The right strategy can drive quality traffic to your website, boosting enquiries and sales, so it’s of the utmost importance to monitor your Google Ads campaigns carefully. One of the best metrics to keep an eye on is the Google Ads click-through rate (CTR). But what exactly is this and what’s the best CTR boosting formula to help your campaigns succeed?

Google Ads Click-Through Rate Explained

In layman’s terms, CTR is the rate people ‘click through’ to your website from a specific ad. It’s the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown (impressions). So the CTR formula looks like this:

Clicks / impressions = CTR %

For example, if you had 5 clicks and 100 impressions, your CTR would be 5%. Each of your ads, listings and keywords have their own CTRs that you can see listed in your account.

What’s Considered a ‘Good’ Click-Through Rate?

If you’re wondering what a good click-through rate actually is, you’re not alone. Each month, around 1,300 people worldwide ask Google ‘What is a good CTR?’ as they search hard for benchmarks. The reality is, every industry is different, so it’s important to set realistic goals according to your sector. This will help to monitor your performance against competitors and keep check of your PPC success.

Recent data suggests that the average click-through rate in Google Ads on mobile across all industries is 4.10% on the Search Network, and 0.60% on the Display Network. While the Search Network refers to Google’s ad platform that primarily serves text-based ads, the Display Network typically serves users image-based ads.

When desktop is factored in, click-through rates across search and display are both lower – 3.17% and 0.46% respectively – than mobile-exclusive click-through rates. Overall, the average click-through rate on PPC ads has increased since February, especially on Google search campaigns due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Food and Groceries, and Charities and Non-Profits have CTRs that far exceed their typical performance. Higher CTRs on Travel and Tourism, however, may be a sign of trouble as many searchers look to cancel their itineraries in light of the Covid-19 chaos.

What’s the Perfect CTR Formula?

Unlike clicks from SEO campaigns, PPC stands for Pay Per Click. Therefore, Google Ads will cost you money. The good news is, you can adjust each and every Google Ads campaign you run according to budget. But how can you maximize the click-through rate of ads in order to get quality leads and achieve a higher Google Ads ROI? Here are some CTR boosting strategies.

#1 Improve Your Quality Score

Ads with a good Quality Score achieve higher rankings and cost the advertisers less per click. Because they have a more prominent position on the page, they are also likely to have a higher click-through rate. So, if you’re not familiar with Quality Score and what it could mean for your campaign, it’s time to do your homework.

According to Google, Quality Score is akin to a vehicle warning light, indicating the health of both your ads and your keywords.  It’s a metric based on the relevance and quality of your advertising, the likelihood that someone will click on your ad, and the user experience consumers will have if they click on your site. With relevance and the topicality of your ad copy being of paramount importance, it’s essential to display the keyword you’re targeting in your ad headline, the body copy of the ad, and the ad URL.

In the above ad, ‘Artificial Grass’ appears in essential locations to ensure a high quality score. Keywords should ideally mirror a user’s search query to ensure your ad is as relevant as possible, as this will in turn lead to high-quality clicks from people genuinely looking for the type of content you’re offering.

Remember, the experience the users have on your site will also impact your PPC ad Quality Score, so your keyword placement and optimization efforts need to be consistent.

#2 Use the Best Ad Extensions

On Google’s very own Google Ads Help page, the company details that ad extensions provide you with the chance to provide additional information and encourage more people to choose your business. Doing so has the effect of increasing click-through rate significantly, with the various extension formats including call buttons, location details, increased volumes of text, and even links to other parts of your website. So, this can form part of your show stopping CTR formula.

The best ad extension to use will depend on your business. If you offer a range of services, you might want to link to various parts of your website as seen below. This makes your ad extremely user friendly while simultaneously promoting different parts of your business.

Above is an example of sitelink extension. There are many extensions available you can use them according to your requirement.  If you’re running a Google Ads campaign based on a current promotion, you’ll probably want to mention this in your ad extension to increase those all-important clicks. Use bold to make the offer stand out further. Putting a date in your ad can also create a fear of missing out – otherwise known as FOMO. This, in turn, can encourage people to click through to see if they can grab a bargain before it’s too late and is a popular tactic used by PPC advertisers.

#3 Create High-Converting Ad Content

Your ad can be shown hundreds or thousands of times, but if only a few people feel compelled to click on it, your click-through rate will be extremely low and may be delivered less and less by Google. So, as well as positioning keywords and using ad extensions to expand your content, you’ve also got to create high-converting copy. This means crafting words that sell. Your headline is an important part of any Google Ad campaign as the bold font makes it the first thing people will read. As well as containing your focus keyword, it needs to be persuasive.

If you type Psoriasis Help into Google, the top ads shown for this particular search are extremely enticing. The top ad (shown below) is likely to have a high click-through rate as it mirrors the search intent. The person making this query is looking for help and has probably said the phrases used in the ad content more than once. It’s therefore relevant to their needs and taps into their thought process.

The second ad addresses chronic skin conditions, while the third uses stats to make the headline even more compelling. 98% success you say? Tell me more! Of course, any statistics used to entice should be up-to-date and factually correct, as if they’re not this could tarnish your credibility and make you an untrustworthy source.

It’s also important to use power words such as ‘expert’ to pull the user in and convey intent. Power words add excitement and emotion to your content, helping to connect to the reader. In short, the more appealing, relevant and authoritative your ad is, the more clicks you’re likely to get.

#4 Utilize Smart Bidding Strategies

Smart Bidding is a subset of automated bid strategies that use machine learning to optimize for conversions or conversion value in each and every auction – a feature known as ‘auction-time bidding’. The benefits of advanced machine learning are plentiful. Google states that the machine learning algorithms it uses for bidding utilizes a vast range of data in order to more accurately predict the impact on conversion different bid amounts may have. Such is the breadth of the parameters being assessed, the result is more accurate than any activity conducted by an individual.

What’s really impressive about Smart Bidding is that Google will automate when your ads appear, with a view to only entering your ad in auctions when you are more likely to get a click.

#5 Make the Most of Responsive Display Ads

In order to get the highest click-through rates, you need to deliver the most relevant and appealing content to your audience – and that’s what Responsive Display ads are all about. With this asset-based feature, ads automatically adjust their size, appearance and format to fit available ad spaces. With the assets that you enter, including logos, headlines, images, videos and descriptions, Google automatically generates your ad as spaces become available, and uses the multiple assets that you upload to optimize for the best performance. Responsive display ads can show as almost any size text, image or native format.

You can also create Responsive Text ads to deliver the right ad to the right audience. With this ad format, you can enter multiple headlines and descriptions and, over time, Google Ads will automatically test different combinations and learn which perform best. By adapting your ad’s content to closely match potential customers’ search terms, responsive search ads can boost click-through rates and greatly improve your campaign’s performance.

#6 Create Themed Keyword Groups

The Google Ads interface allows you to add multiple keywords into your account and into your Ad Groups. The keywords that are organized in each Ad Group should all be relevant to one another and the ads should also be closely related to the keywords. This is to ensure the ad delivered always matches the search intent and is considered relevant. There should also be some congruence between the landing page and both the ads and the keywords that you’re targeting. This makes conversion tracking easier and relevant to conversion types based on keyword phrases.

#7 Pause Ads That Aren’t Performing

It might be a bitter pill to swallow, but not all ads you run will be successful. This is why it’s so important to keep an eye on click-through rates; if your campaign is costing you money without returns, it needs to be paused or tweaked.

Google expects PPC ads to see a click-through rate of at least 0.5% – in fact, moving more towards the 2% mark. If your ad isn’t achieving this, it will be shown less often. After all, Google’s job is to deliver content people want to see and read. Of course, lower visibility isn’t going to improve your click-through rate either, so there’s no benefit to running poor performing campaigns.

Wrap Up

It’s obvious to all that running a PPC campaign takes time, energy and continuous monitoring. By adjusting your strategy and keeping a close eye on your click-through rates to ensure they’re as high as possible, you can get more eyes on your brand. And, like almost any marketing activity, continued assessment and refinement will lead to improved performance over time, enabling you to establish your own benchmarks at a granular level.

There really is no better indication to the efficacy of your advertising than the click-through rates. Being able to step back to objectively assess the bigger picture is of fundamental importance, and using the data available will enable you to make informed decisions about the future direction of your advertising activity. Of course, it will also enable you to establish a blueprint for future success, thereby resulting in more economical budgeting and improved conversion.

While increases in click-through rate leads to increases in conversion, getting the right go-to market strategy for startups in place to achieve success isn’t easy. There are certain companies which are providing services in increasing your CTR.

Mint Twist, will be able to help provide you with all the support and guidance necessary to help you boost your Google Ads click-through rate. Simply get in touch with a member of their team and they will work alongside you to develop a winning CTR formula.

Lee Faulkner

PPC Account Director at Mint Twist