As a marketer, you spend hours, days, or weeks working on campaigns. But your work doesn’t end once your campaigns are live. Now, you need to measure their success!
The definition of “success” can vary from campaign to campaign, but one common way to measure it is by monitoring the click-through rates on your marketing content. Click-through rates, or CTRs, determine how effective your ads, social media posts, and CTAs are at driving traffic to your site. A high CTR indicates that your ad is compelling, while a low CTR indicates that you need to do more to stand out.
So, what can you do to push your campaigns from an average CTR to a great one? Improving your CTR requires you to know your audience well and understand what will pique their curiosity. Let’s explore nine easy ways to improve your CTR and attract potential customers to your website.
What is CTR?
CTR is the ratio of people who click on your link to the number of impressions your ad, social media post, email, or call to action receives. Impressions are the total number of views a piece of content gets, regardless of clicks.
For example, if you have 100 impressions and five clicks, your CTR is 5%. To calculate your CTR, divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions.
A high CTR indicates that your audience finds your content useful and relevant. How do you know? Well, they clicked on it! This means they found it compelling enough to want to learn more.
Your CTR matters because your content is only effective if people see and engage with it. For that to happen, they need to click on your links. By monitoring your CTR, you’ll see how effective your content is at drawing the audience in.
You can measure CTRs on many different types of content with click tracking. While the traditional use of this metric has been to measure clicks on ads, you can also use it to measure clicks on your social media posts, email marketing, organic search results, and more. You can even use CTRs to measure traffic between pages on your site. For example, you can measure CTRs from a blog post to your online store.
Does CTR impact SEO?
You might be wondering about the relationship between your CTR and search engine optimization, or SEO. Your CTRs won’t directly affect your position in the search engine results page or SERP. While Google’s algorithm is complex and changes frequently, there’s currently no evidence to suggest that it considers CTRs when ranking websites.
However, a good SEO strategy could potentially improve the CTR from your search listings to your site. This is because searchers don’t tend to scroll far before clicking on a result. The first position in the SERP has an average CTR of 28.5%, compared to 15.7% for the second position. When your site ranks highly on the SERP, it could help you generate a higher CTR and send more traffic to your content.
9 simple strategies to improve CTRs
Improving your CTR is all about making your marketing more attractive to your audience. In many cases, you only have a few seconds to make an impression. You’ll need to grab your target audience’s attention with just a few words, which can be difficult when they’re already consuming so much content daily.
What is a good CTR? This all depends on your industry, the platform you’re using, and the type of content you’re creating. Average CTRs vary widely based on these factors.
There are many reasons to focus on achieving a higher CTR. Delivering the right content to the right audience helps prospective customers move through the sales funnel and can potentially increase conversion rates. Getting more clicks on your content also extends your organic reach and helps boost brand awareness.
If you’re ready to enjoy the benefits of a higher CTR, here are nine strategies you can leverage within your campaigns.
1. Target and segment your audience
To maintain a good CTR, you need to know your audience and what they want to see. Start by defining your audience. What demographic categories do they fall into? What are their needs, interests, and behavior patterns?
Don’t be afraid to get specific. For example, if you run a clothing brand, you’ll want to identify the age, gender identity, and interests of your standard customer. You’ll also need to identify the types of marketing campaigns they’ll be most responsive to. Some groups might respond best to a specific type of social media content, while others might be more likely to click on a standard digital ad campaign.
You’ll also need to take time to understand your audience’s pain points and what’s on their mind when they interact with your content. These pain points can change based on current trends. Conducting market research is often the most efficient way to learn about your target audience. You can do this through online polls, surveys, and focus groups.
Once you identify your audience, the next step is to segment them. Segmentation involves breaking your target audience into subgroups. For example, you might have segments for specific locations, online behavior patterns, or demographic groups. You can then create different digital marketing campaigns for each segment. Segmenting your marketing campaigns allows you to personalize them and create a stronger connection with the audience, which could improve your CTR.
2. Conduct keyword research
Keyword research helps you understand what terms people are searching for. You can then include these keywords in your marketing strategies to increase your visibility, which can improve your CTRs. There are a variety of free and paid tools, including Semrush, Moz, and Google Keyword Planner, that you can use to identify high-quality keywords.
For example, if you’re conducting a pay-per-click ad campaign with Google ads, you’ll need to identify target keywords. Your ads will show up in the SERP when someone searches for these keywords. You can also use keywords in social media marketing campaigns to increase your chances of appearing in search results.
There are many different types of keywords to consider when planning your marketing campaigns. Look at both short-tail and long-tail keywords; short-tail keywords are more general, while long-tail keywords are more specific. Almost 92% of search queries are long-tail keywords. If you’re targeting customers in a specific geographic area, you can also focus on location-specific keywords.
You can also choose keywords based on search intent. When customers want to learn, they’ll use informational keywords, such as “how to shorten long links.” However, when they want to buy, they’ll use commercial keywords, such as “best link shortener.”
Decide which keywords make the most sense based on where your campaign fits in the sales funnel. To target customers who are further along in the sales funnel, you can even use branded keywords, which include the name of your company or product.
3. Optimize title tags and meta descriptions
Your title tags and meta descriptions are what users see when your website pops up in search engine results. The title tag is the title of your website, while the meta description is the short two-line snippet underneath it.
This information tells searchers what to expect when they click on the results. Optimizing your title tags and meta descriptions to be more engaging and relevant can help generate more interest and improve CTRs. It’s also important to have a URL that’s relevant to your site.
Your title tags and meta descriptions should be clear and concise. Users should know exactly what to expect from your page just by looking at this information. If it’s too vague, they’ll likely choose a different site instead.
Additionally, make sure to add your target keyword to your title tag and meta description. This is important for SEO and can improve your SERP position, which is vital to maintaining good CTRs.
4. Create engaging visuals
For social media marketing, email campaigns, and display ads, be sure to include engaging, high-quality visuals along with your ad copy. Most people will notice the visual content in an ad before reading the text. This is a make-or-break opportunity to capture their attention.
Keep the small details in mind when designing your visual assets. Your fonts and color scheme should be dynamic and representative of your brand identity. There are many different types of visuals you can use in your campaigns, including graphics, photos, animations, and videos. No matter which format you choose, make sure your visuals are eye-catching and spark the viewer’s curiosity.
5. Use a branded URL shortener
Branded links are powerful marketing assets that look professional and appealing, which can help increase your CTR.
Wondering how to shorten a URL? Start by purchasing a custom-branded domain and connect it to your link shortener. Attaching a custom domain to Bitly replaces the “bit.ly” in your links with the name of your choosing.
Here are a few examples of custom-branded domains that businesses use to create branded links:
- ESPN uses es.pn
- The New York Times uses nyti.ms
- BuzzFeed uses bzfd.it
In addition to using a custom domain, you can customize the back half of your Bitly links (the random alphanumerics that appear after the “/”). This shows your audience where you’re sending them.
For example, ESPN might go from:
bit.ly/DAHOc72 → es.pn/FootballFridays
6. Run A/B tests
A/B tests are one of the most effective ways to get inside your audience’s head. In an A/B test, you run two concurrent marketing campaigns with slightly different content. For example, you might test an Instagram ad with two separate captions or a PPC ad with two different headlines. The rest of the content in the ad should be the same across both campaigns to generate accurate results.
Running an A/B test will tell you what type of marketing content generates higher CTRs for your brand. This is valuable data that can inform your future marketing campaigns for stronger results.
7. Create engaging CTAs
A call to action, or CTA, is text or a phrase that prompts the reader to respond. For example, you might place a “buy now” button on a product landing page or include a message on your social media posts telling viewers to subscribe.
Good CTAs increase your CTR because they encourage the reader to take action. Keep your CTAs concise—they’ll lose their impact if they’re too wordy or convoluted.
Use bold verbs that are relevant to the link you’re promoting, and emphasize the benefits of taking action. For example, if you want users to follow your YouTube channel, you could use the CTA “Subscribe now for weekly videos.”
8. Add a special offer to PPC headlines
One effective way to make your PPC ads stand out is to include a special offer in the headline. This could be an offer for a discount, an exclusive product, or a freebie. Regardless of which tactic you choose, your offer should be relevant and valuable to your audience.
This strategy creates a sense of urgency that encourages readers to click on your search ads immediately if they’re interested. These headlines can be simple, and they should get the point across quickly. Here are some examples:
- Act fast—40% off all shoes for 24 hours!
- Shop now to unlock a limited-edition collectible item!
- Today only: New subscribers unlock our free e-book!
9. Make online ads skimmable
Large walls of text can be overwhelming for consumers. Most people will skip over a large block of text when browsing online. To prevent this, make your digital ads skimmable. Break up text into small paragraphs and bulleted lists, and highlight important words and phrases.
By making your online ads more skimmable, readers will get the key takeaways even if they don’t have time to read everything. If these takeaways match their search intent, they can click through to your site right away.
Discover more ways to improve CTRs with Bitly Analytics
Good CTRs are the first step to getting customers into the sales funnel. These nine techniques will help make your content more clickable to attract your target audience’s attention.
Bitly Analytics helps you track helpful insights like link performance over time, and even shows you where customers are intersecting from, which devices they use, and which websites they came from. When used alongside other tools like Google Analytics, you can optimize your marketing campaigns for higher CTRs.
Ready to optimize your campaigns to draw in more engagement? Get started with Bitly for free today to improve your CTR!
