Categories
It doesn’t matter what your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising goals are – clickthrough Rate (CTR) is always a crucial metric.
If you have a low CTR, it’s a surefire sign that something in your campaign needs attention. Ignoring the red flag can be a costly error, which will do no favors for your budget or your goals.
Read on to discover the importance of CTR, and learn what a good CTR is with respect to your specific PPC campaign.
Clickthrough rate, or CTR, is the percentage of ad viewers (also known as “impressions”) that click on the ad. The formula to calculate CTR is:
Clickthrough Rate = Total Clicks on Ad / Total Impressions
For example, if your ad received 100 impressions, and got 10 clicks, your CTR would be 10%.
If you want to view the CTR for your ad campaigns in Google Ads, you’ll find it on the dashboard. Here are some interesting facts about CTR:
By keeping CTR in mind, you can gauge performance on your ads and keywords, using it as a guide to determine where improvement is needed.
Click-through rates (CTRs) matter significantly in digital marketing for several compelling reasons. Firstly, they serve as a crucial metric to gauge the effectiveness and relevance of your content or ads. A higher CTR often indicates that your content resonates well with your audience and that your ad is compelling enough to drive engagement. Secondly, search engines and advertising platforms like Google use CTR as a factor in determining the quality score of ads. A higher quality score typically leads to better ad placements and lower costs per click, positively impacting the overall performance of your campaigns. Additionally, CTRs contribute to refining targeting strategies and optimizing ad copy or content. They provide insights into audience preferences, allowing marketers to tailor their messaging and offerings for better resonance and higher conversion rates. Ultimately, a strong CTR not only signifies audience interest but also plays a pivotal role in enhancing visibility, reducing ad costs, and driving better campaign outcomes.
In any realm of digital marketing, keeping track of your audience, prospects, leads, and customers is an essential task. Despite its importance, 37% of marketers aren’t confident with lead generation, and 33% doubt that their business has the means to turn any profit.
As global business is advancing so quickly, mastering Google Ads is fast becoming a necessary skill for modern marketing teams. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done. The dominant platform in online advertising can be overwhelming, with its vast range of metrics, features, and add-on options.
So, let’s cut through the noise and make things clear for the most common advertising channels, so you can learn how to understand CTR.
A good CTR is a lot lower than you may think. According to Google, advertisers that are new to the game should aim for a 2% CTR on their campaign. Over time, with more experience, you may be able to raise the bar a little, but 2% is a decent benchmark to start. If you can establish a strong position in a relatively non-competitive industry, a CTR of 5% or higher may well be possible.
Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the world. As such, there are pros and cons to advertisers using it to market their products and services.
The big benefit is the opportunity to reach a vast, targeted audience, as you can create very specific ads for niche groups. However, the major caveat is that Facebook is highly competitive – to the point, it makes it very difficult to get attention.
Also, most people are on Facebook for social purposes, rather than for shopping. Because of that, CTR suffers as a lot of people simply ignore ads.
If you’re using Facebook Ads, 0.5% to 1.6% is considered a good CTR. According to Facebook, anything below 0.02% is indicative of a poor ad.
Expert opinion on the matter of banner ads suggests that the average CTR for banner ads is on the wane. That being said, many marketers still like to use them. If you do, anything about 2% CTR promises a good return on investment (ROI) for your campaign.
Don’t panic if you aren’t hitting that, but keep a close eye as a CTR under 0.25% should promptly be addressed to save your budget from going to waste.
It can be tricky to pinpoint a good CTR for a newsletter as it will vary depending on the type of newsletter. For instance, B2B newsletters typically generate a higher CTR than B2C.
In either case, something between 10-20% is a good marker, although it’s possible to get a much higher CTR if your emails are highly-targeted. Using personalization, clever subject lines, and behavior-based campaigns can lead to surges in open rates and CTR.
Learn More: What PPC Managers Should Measure in CTR Performance Report
Now that you know the estimated figures for a good CTR, it’s time to delve a little bit deeper. What constitutes a good CTR?
Your campaign performance is shaped by a myriad of external factors, many of which are outside your control. Also, there is a range of aspects you can control, such as:
With all the factors in play, it’s not easy to define a good CTR, especially as the benchmark will be different depending on where prospects are in the customer journey. For example, a remarketing campaign that targets leads at the bottom-of-the-funnel may yield a high CTR, whereas a broad brand awareness campaign will likely generate a lower CTR.
To get a better understanding of what a good CTR is in your industry, you should study data-backed industry reports to set your CTR benchmarks against active competitors.
Aside from the elements mentioned above, several major factors have a significant impact on the CTR of your PPC campaign.
Let’s look at each of them:
The Expected CTR will be dramatically different depending on whether you’re running an ad in the Search Network, Display network, or Google Shopping. Generally speaking, Search network text, and Google Shopping campaigns have a higher CTR most of the time. Display campaigns are often lower, although remarketing campaigns on the Display network have good potential for decent ROI.
As you know, relevance matters in PPC advertising. It has a direct impact on the user journey, from the search query to the user experience on your landing page.
With relevance in mind, you can make smarter decisions regarding your keyword choices, bids, and match types. It will also assist in the creation of negative keyword lists and audience personas, which will refine your targeting and ad copy, so you have high-performing ads that earn a high-Quality Score.
Sometimes, even when you have relevant ads, your ad position is lower down in the search results. Whenever your ad is shown below the fold, you may consider Google shopping ad units and ad extensions. These features can drive up your impressions so you can reach a broader audience.
Typically, CTR will be higher on mobile compared to other devices like tablets or desktop. One reason for this is because mobile ads take up more space on the screen, making it more eye-catching to users. Also, mobile users spend a lot more time passively browsing, so they may be more receptive to ads. This is especially true when compared to desktop users who often use their computers for a particular purpose.
Data is only as good as the people processing it. In PPC advertising, you can perform data analysis to learn more about your campaign performance, audience, and competitors. Then, with the insights, you can optimize your Ads account for much better results.
Ideally, you should have at least 100 impressions on an ad before you start optimizing, as this is a solid base that will give you a decent picture of how the ad has performed so far.
Learn More: What It Means For CTR To Be More Than 100%
When you’re considering keywords for your campaign, you’ll see that clickthrough rates can vary dramatically in vertical form. For example, broad terms like “lawyer” will have a huge search volume, but they’ll also be very competitive and expensive.
Pro Tip:
The average position metric has been sunset Therefore, advertisers should focus on the absolute top and top impression metrics to get a clear understanding of what their ad position is in Google search engine results pages (SERPs).
So, why does CTR matter? What is the importance of having a high CTR in a Google Ads campaign?
If you have a low CTR, it tells you that your ads aren’t getting a lot of clicks, which means you aren’t generating much traffic or interest in your business, or its products and services. With a lower CTR, your ads will have a lower ad position, often showing below the organic search results in Google.
By comparison, a higher CTR will give your ads the visibility they need to attract more traffic, which leads to greater opportunities for conversions.
Here are four benefits of a good CTR:
If your keywords are going to reap the rewards, they need to have a good Quality Score, which is directly related to the clickthrough rate. Quality Score takes several other factors into account, including user location, user search queries, and the historical performance of your keywords.
By focusing on creating relevant ads that align with user intent, you can generate a good CTR, and in turn, a high-Quality Score. Doing this is worthwhile because it improves your ad performance, ensuring your campaign is optimized to keep moving towards your goals. Furthermore, a high-Quality Score will reduce your average cost-per-click (CPC), which is excellent news for your budget.
A high CTR keeps traffic flowing through your ad to your website landing pages. If you have a low CTR but a relatively low impression rate, it’s a sign that you aren’t attracting new visitors.
With more clicks and more traffic, it’s clear that more conversions may soon follow. While this is by no means guaranteed, if your ads are highly-targeted, the traffic you generate should consist of qualified leads.
In other words, these users are genuinely interested in what you have to offer, so they may be likely to convert.
Google rewards relevance. So, if you have relevant ads and a high CTR, Google will notice. Soon enough, as your Quality Score rises, Google will show your ad in a more prominent position in SERPs.
With everything else taken into consideration, one big question looms:
How can you increase your clickthrough rate?
Here are five tips:
Learn More: Proven Tricks to Boost Google Ads Clickthrough Rate
A CTR above 2% is often considered good, but it varies based on industry and other factors.
Yes, a higher CTR can positively impact Quality Score, leading to lower costs and better ad placement.
Learning how to increase CTR is a top priority among PPC managers. Ultimately, it all boils down to relevance. If your ads are aligned with user intent, you can appeal to users at all phases of the customer journey.
In many campaigns, 2% CTR is a great result, but there is always room for improvement. Stay on top of your keywords to identify the top performers and low performers.
Don’t get too hung up on comparisons if you aren’t hitting a high CTR of 20% or above for generic terms or overly-competitive keywords. As long as you are keeping a close watch on your campaigns, and optimizing them to deliver more relevant ads, the results will soon come.
If you want to measure the CTR of your Google Ads campaign and discover more about how your campaigns are performing, check out the PPCexpo CTR Performance Report.
How much did you enjoy this article?
We will help your ad reach the right person, at the right time
Actionable insights discovered for you. Now you can do more in less time.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner will help you align your keywords with the customers’ intent.
Frequent audits will help you optimize your PPC campaign for success.
Visualizations give you the ability to instantly grasp the insights hidden in your numbers.
Experience the new revolution in reporting … click your way to insights, don’t scroll.
Calculate the number of combinations in your PPC campaign. It may surprise you.
Related articles
A landing page is a web page designed to drive specific actions. Learn the essentials of creating high-converting landing pages in our guide.
ROAS calculation can help you evaluate every PPC campaign's performance so that you know which of your campaigns are converting the best.
Discover the marketing lifecycle stages and how they shape customer relationships. You’ll understand their role in driving customer engagement and retention.
