Increase Your Click-Through Rate

Your CTR or Click-Through Rate is a test of how well your marketing strategy and the campaigns you create from it performs in the market.

The CTR of your business is the main KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that determines how successful these campaigns are.  It measures the number of people that click on your business’ links or advertisements online.

If your CTR is low it usually means there is an issue with your ad campaign and it needs to be solved since it won’t garner many leads or increase your business revenue. Your prospects progress through your marketing funnel only when they are clicking-through your links or ads to your site.

Here are a few guidelines to make sure they do and increase your Click-Through Rate.

Headline Optimization

Besides photos and imagery, headlines grab users’ attention the most.  Since this is the case, it’s important to craft snappy headlines for your content.

You should create headlines that are engaging and have an emotional impact.  If you can elicit an emotional response, you’re sure to get a click-through from a potential customer.

To trigger an emotional response, use power words in your headline.  You can also use parentheses or brackets in them to draw attention.

Write Engaging Copy for Your Ads

You need to know your audience in order to create compelling headlines.  It’s vital to know your target audience, what their needs are, what they think of your product or service, and what they want in order to fulfill their needs and answer their questions.

You should also be aware of the opposite and what they don’t need or expect from you so you can remove that from your copy.

Here are a few tips to get to know your target audience to create the right copy for them.

• Surveys – Find their likes and dislikes and what they think of your company or brand.
• Scour Reviews – See what customers are saying about your business and what drives them emotionally.
• Keep It Simple – This means making it easy for anyone to understand by using direct numbers, discount offers, or highlighting pricing in your copy.

Make sure to get your ad copy right to increase your click-through rate by writing strong meta descriptions that set you apart from your competition.

SEO Keyword Research

Make sure SEO Keyword strategy is well thought out and planned. Use SEO keyword research tools to discover what keywords your competition is using, what keywords or phrases people use to find your website and similar businesses, and once you have the right ones use them in your ads to increase your CTR.

Your keywords should be in the URL and the body of your ad.  It’s also important to do research on negative keywords, the ones that prevent your ads from appearing in relevant search engine results, and omit them from your ad copy.

Attract Users with Emojis 

Like SEO Keywords it has been shown that emojis actually can improve your CTR as well.

They have become increasingly popular and show levity with your business and brand.  Studies have shown that nearly half of consumers prefer brands that don’t take themselves too seriously and are more laid back.

Make sure to explore this new trend when crafting your ads.

Answer the User Intent and Search Intent

You can hone your marketing message for a bigger impact by segmenting your prospects into levels of interest and other qualities.

You can target these potential customers with customized ads for them once you have segmented them into the right tight-knit groups.

User intent can also be found through keyword research in Google. After a search is completed there is a partition under the query box that also shows related snippets to discover more about user intent.

By finding out what your potential customers are asking for, you can use that information in your ads, emails and listings to increase engagement and your CTR.

Use a Heatmap Tool to Understand User Behavior

Even if you do everything right and optimize your ads and copy, you may still experience a low CTR.  If that happens, using a Heatmap tool can help.

A Heatmap tool gives you a visual representation of all the actions a user takes on your site.  This way you can see what to improve, like simplifying navigation menus or making entry fields more user friendly.

Another similar tool to help with your CS is a Scrollmap.  You can use this to search for parts of your site that visitors are failing to continue scrolling through.  Your copy may not be engaging enough or not very informative.

The data you can gather from these tools will streamline your website and make you better prepared to solve the needs of your potential customers.

Your CTR is a litmus test for the success of your marketing web campaigns.  If you are experiencing low CTR, make sure to follow these guidelines to solve the issues you’re having.

Once all parts of your strategy and campaigns are optimized for a boost in your CTS, your campaigns should improve and your conversion rate should increase as a result.