When it comes to understanding your audience, one of the best ways is to look at the numbers. How many people are visiting your website? How many people are opening your emails? This information gives you valuable data that you can use to make informed decisions that will bring value to your business. But, how are these numbers determined? And, what makes one number better than the other?
Understanding Click Through Rates
First and foremost, we need to understand what this metric is and why it’s important. CTR stands for click-through rate. It’s a measurement that shows the number of clicks an advertiser receives to their ad per number of impressions.
For pay-per-click (PPC) ads, you always want your click-through rates to be high and it’s important for overall campaign health to do so. The CTR directly affects Quality Scores and that’s what’s used by the Google Ads algorithm to determine how much you, the advertiser, will pay for each click.
The CTR Equation
So, what is a CTR, really? It’s the rate at which your PPC ads are clicked. Basically, it’s the percentage of people who click your ad (clicks) divided by the ones who view your ad (impressions).
(Total Clicks on Ad) / (Total Impressions) = Click Through Rate
As far as what constitutes a good click through rate, the average is around 1.91% for search and 0.35% for display. Of course, these are just averages. The true percentage that you should be reaching for is completely based on the industry you’re targeting. As with estimated bid prices, these metrics can be completely different. This chart from WordStream gives you a better idea of the numbers for your industry.
Why is CTR important?
The importance of your CTR is directly correlated to Quality Score. Here at Symphony, our goal is to create the highest ROI possible. And, when it comes to PPC campaigns, CTR is one of the important factors we look to work on improving. If we can get the ads in front of qualified customers at a cheaper rate, that means more leads and higher profit margins.
While CTR’s are important, they’re not the only metric that we look at. In terms of Google Ads, you’ll have to account for qualified keyword targeting that leads to the campaign CTR’s. If the targeted keywords aren’t producing qualified leads, it won’t matter if you have a 10% CTR or a .01% CTR. That’s why we account for a large list of metrics and data analysis to create the best campaigns possible.
