What is a Good CTR for Google Ads?

Your ads can’t generate conversions, if they don’t get clicks. It’s a simple theory, but there’s more to it than that. Many digital marketers still don’t realize how much more.

Measuring the clicks performance of your ads has long been a key metric tracked by companies in online marketing, as it shows you just how much attention your ads are receiving. Moreover, it tells you how effective the ads are at enticing viewers to act.

But what if you aren’t getting enough clicks? What can you do to boost your click’s performance?

What is the Average Click-Through Rate?

An important metric in clicks performance is the average click-through rate, or average CTR. It is calculated by dividing the total number of Ad Clicks by the number of Ad Impressions.

The average CTR across major industries is only about 2%, so anything above that is pretty good. If you have a low CTR, your Quality Score will suffer, and this affects the placement of your ads, which makes it even harder to get clicks and conversions. A low CTR is a sign that your ads just aren’t relevant or inspiring enough for your viewers.

Having a high average CTR does not automatically mean success either, contrary to what you may expect. You may simply be attracting unqualified leads through irrelevant keywords or broad targeting.

Knowing how to get the right kind of clicks is what matters.

How to Use Clicks Performance to Improve Your ROI

By monitoring your average CTR, companies can reduce their wasted spend, thus getting a higher return on their marketing and advertising investments. This is particularly true whenever you have decent CTRs but low conversion rates. It’s no good to generate lots of clicks, if nobody converts at the end.

You can improve your clicks performance in a couple of ways:

• Ad copy – Study the ad copy in your best performing ads. What language and phrases are used? How is the call-to-action? Consider the design and the power words, and figure out what makes these ads successful. Try to replicate these aspects in your other ads.
• Keywords – Narrow your focus to reach a more defined audience. Of course, you will get a few less impressions, but the CTR is likely to improve as more qualified leads click on your ads. Being more selective with targeted keywords pays off in the end.

Look Beyond the Clicks

As important as clicks performance is among your key performance indicators, you shouldn’t make it the top priority. Aside from the problem of click fraud skewing the numbers for many campaigns, we must consider that the overwhelming majority of clicks are usually from a relatively small proportion of people.

For that reason, putting too much focus into assessing the clicks performance can mean you are only engaging with a small segment of your core audience.

Taking the time to discover more negative keywords and focus on specific long-tail keywords is a worthwhile strategy, which can improve the average CTR on your ads. In time, this will cut back on wasted spend, and also improve your quality score.

More importantly, it will ensure the people that are clicking are likely to be qualified leads, so the time you spend assessing clicks performance won’t be wasted with people who are never going to convert.