How to Increase Your Click-Through Rate
As competition steepens for most sectors of our new digital economy, online marketing and paid search has rapidly developed into a backbone for success. Higher click-through rates are quite significant for any AdWords campaign. High CTR values do generate more traffic at a cheaper cost to your digital ads. This is because, in determining the cost per click value, search engines make use of the ‘quality score.’ CTR determines quality score values.
By extension, therefore, CTR values have an inverse relationship with the cost charged per click and ultimately on conversions. This revelation is even backed by Hal Varian, the chief economist at Google. He explains that the higher the quality scores of an Ad Word, the lower the CPC. The need to lower costs by increasing CTR can only lead one to wonder; “How can I raise my CTR?” The following is a step by step guide on how to achieve the same.
Step 1: Targeting and Bidding
The first and most important step to accomplish while increasing CTR values is to objectively target your adverts spend. This can be achieved by carefully going through the search terms report which can prove useful in developing keywords.
The next important step is to increase bids.
The click through rate will increase as the position of your Ad on the page improves. It is only logical, therefore, that companies that are financially able should increase their bids. Increasing bids with the PPC management tools like WordStream will improve the page position of the Ad even further. Organizations that are not financially stable enough to profitably double their CPC should seek the alternative route. The alternative route is to increase bids for Ads that are at position one. Some of the Ads that were at position one after targeting your Ad spend appropriately can attract significantly more clicks through higher bidding. Basically, in both scenarios, the most fundamental thing to do is to make a good Ad that can increase your click through rates.
Step 2: What do I optimize
Good online advertisers should only use data and calculated results to make conclusive decisions. A recommendable technique would be to target all the Ad spends into groups that contain one Ad and a single match keyword. Applying this method should put you in a good place to test the effectiveness of your Ads. The primary idea is to analyze and determine what makes your best performing Ads have a high CTR. Thereafter, you should apply these findings to the rest of the Ads that have lower CTR values. This technique can provide conclusive results while also disregarding the need to test every Ad individually.
As a start, you may use a filter to determine the Ads that are not performing as required. Such Ads are those with relatively low CTRs. However, a low or a high CTR value is relative to the context of your organization. Therefore, you should consider the average value of your campaign, to figure out what Ad is attracting a high or low click through rate. This system, however, might not be completely fool proof since CTR is linked to the position of the Ad on the page.
Alternatively, you may consider the average click through rate as per position of every Ad. The quality score can also express which keywords are not attracting enough clicks. An Ad with a quality score of seven or less is more likely to under-perform for its position.
Step 3: A/B Testing your Ad Creative
On completion of the second phase and having figured out which Ads perform best and which ones do not, you should create a second Ad which will compete with the initial one. Your two Ads should have closely similar headlines with the most significant difference coming in the description lines. This is because; your headline should be as close as possible to what the user seeks. Your aim is to develop a variation of the first Ad with similar capabilities. The two Ads should, therefore, have different description lines one and two but with similar headings. Make descriptions alike between Ad groups as well to identify a most efficient language for your campaign.
While testing the CTR of advertising creative, craft your messages to gain information about your clients’ preferences and tastes. You should determine whether they are:
Price conscious: If your clients are driven by price, try putting some monetary values in your Ad and use symbols like $ and decimal points.
Service conscious: Put a service delivery line on your Ad if your clients are service oriented
Quality conscious: Focus more on the god qualities of your products and services. Try to use catchy phrases like “better built”, and “long lasting”
Risk averse: Offer a warranty or free returns guarantee to risk averse customers
Note: Set the Ads to rotate indefinitely in AdWords. This will ensure that the search engine will not favor the post with a high CTR just yet offering you more time to complete your experiment.
Quick CTR optimization
You can also improve the CTR on your Ads without testing them often. You may attempt to:
Use ad extensions: Ad extensions can increase the CTR of your Ad. However, they increase the click surface area too. Beware of establishing that all clicks are equal.
Full stop at the terminal of line 1: This will ensure that the headline and description one of your Ad appear as one statement.
With the above information, increasing the click through rates for your Ads should be pretty easy. Moreover, it is recommendable to test frequently and have a competing Ad in your best-performing groups.
The A/B testing technique may take some time to deliver conclusive findings. However, once you have some tests ongoing, it will be much easier to increase the effectiveness of your Ads and improve your campaign’s effectiveness over time.
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