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Getting people to view your ad when they’re doom-scrolling is not enough to boost a business’ bottom line: Your audience needs to engage with content. That’s why the number of people who click on a link — or click-through rate (CTR) — is a crucial indicator of how many potential customers you have and how much money you may be leaving on the table.
“Click-through rate is one of the simplest yet most powerful metrics in digital marketing,” says Matt Wilcox, digital marketing strategist at The SMB Strategist. Essentially, it shows how many people clicked on your content, versus how many people saw it. While that may seem pretty basic, CTR shows if you’re effectively grabbing consumer attention. “Think of it like a first impression,” Wilcox adds: If people click on your ad, they’ve engaged with it. It’s a way of saying they’re listening and interested in learning more. If they scroll past, it’s a good sign that you must change your marketing approach to achieve the desired results — more sales and conversions.
What Is Click-through Rate (CTR)?
Click-through rate is the number of people who click on a link in your advertisement or content. If 100 people see your ad and six click on it, that’s a 6% click-through rate. CTR comes into play during the early stages of a digital ad campaign.
“Most campaigns work like a funnel,” Wilcox explains. First, someone sees your ad, then they click on it. From there, the goal is to get that person to take action, whether buying a product, booking a service, or signing up for a giveaway or newsletter. “CTR doesn’t tell you whether someone converted or bought anything, it only tells you if your ad made them curious enough to learn more,” he adds.
Why Is It Important to Monitor CTR?
Monitoring CTR is essential because it’s a crucial step in acquiring a new customer, also known as a conversion. Ultimately, a conversion is the end goal of the marketing funnel, but it’s impossible to convert new customers if they’re not clicking through in the first place. “That’s why CTR is most useful when trying to measure how effective your ad creative is,” Wilcox says.
Click-through rate is not just a barometer for how compelling your messaging is, but also how effective your ad placement and targeting are, says Ethan Hartman, the founder of Mutewind Digital. “A higher CTR indicates your content is attention-grabbing and more people who find it in their search results are ‘clicking through.’”
What Is a Good CTR?
The simple answer is that a “good” click-through rate is between 2% and 5%, “But it really depends on the industry, the type of content, and where it’s being shown,” adds digital marketing expert Sophie Musumeci, founder of Real Entrepreneur Women.
Wilcox says there’s no “one-size-fits-all” answer because it varies by platform, industry, and competition. For example, on Google Ads, where users are already searching for something, “you might expect higher CTRs than on Facebook or Instagram, where ads are more of a distraction from scrolling,” he says.
Likewise, a local business in a niche market might get a CTR as high as 30% if they’re the only ones running ads, whereas a company in a competitive market might be successful with 10%. “What matters more than comparing to others is tracking your own results over time and experimenting with different messages, images, and headlines to improve,” Wilcox says.
Click Rate vs. Click-through Rate
Click Rate Is a More General Term
Although click rate and click-through are similar, click rate is often used in email marketing to indicate how many people opened what a company sent out. It gives businesses an idea of how many people saw their content, rather than how many people reacted to brand messaging by clicking on a link.
Click Rate Is Necessary for Calculating Click-through Rate
In order to know your company’s click-through rate, you must know how many people are viewing your emails, blogs, ads, or videos in the first place. CTR is calculated by dividing the number of people who click on a link by the number of people who saw the content, multiplied by 100. That percentage represents your click-through rate.
CTR = (total clicks ÷ total impressions) x 100
Areas for Improvement
While click rate and click-through rate are related, they can signal different growth opportunities. Wilcox notes that low click rates suggest that email subject lines are not achieving their intended effects, or that audience targeting is ineffective. They’re making a bad first impression, in other words. In contrast, a low CTR may indicate that the content could be more compelling, or the formatting may be off.
Overall, businesses must know how many people are viewing their emails, blogs, videos, and ads, but it’s equally important to know how many people are interacting with them. So, these metrics are different, but similarly essential for improving your marketing approach.
How to Monitor CTR: 4 Platforms To Know Of
Social Campaigns: Facebook Ads Manager
Monitoring your click-through rate depends on what platform you’re using. Facebook Ads Manager is an easy way to track CTR for Facebook content. By simply clicking on the performance tab, companies can access a dashboard that calculates the number of clicks divided by the total number of views, which determines the overall click-through rate.
Search Campaigns: Google Ads
Google Ads can be a similarly effective resource for tracking CTR outside Facebook. To access this and other metrics, click on the Campaigns section and then select ads. This will show you how content is performing, including the click-through rate.
Email Marketing Campaigns: Hubspot and Mailchimp
Email marketing platforms like Hubspot and Mailchimp have accessible dashboards where companies can track CTR and other metrics. Like Facebook Ads Manager and Google Ads, email marketing platforms allow businesses to identify patterns about what content resonates and where subject lines and other content should be tweaked.
Performance Marketing Campaigns: Realize
Beyond tracking your basic click-through rate, more comprehensive tools like Realize can give businesses more data on how to target your audience and optimize your marketing approach. Available under the Campaigns tab, the platform will tell you how many people are clicking on content links, who is clicking multiple times, and how long they’re staying on your landing page. This is valuable insight for retargeting ads and testing new headlines, calls to action, and other content.
Realize supports a wide range of ad formats, including native, display, vertical, and carousel ads, empowering advertisers to achieve their objectives with creative flexibility.
Key Takeaways
Click-through rate, or CTR, is the number of people who click on a link in an ad, blog post, email, video, or other digital content, divided by the total views times 100. A high CTR shows companies that your first impression effectively engages your audience. A low CTR indicates a need to reevaluate subject lines, headings, formatting, calls to action, and other aspects of your creative.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is CTR and why is it important?
CTR, or click-through rate, is the number of people who click on a link in your content, divided by the total number of people who view it, times 100. For instance, if 1,000 people read your email newsletter, and 50 people read it, that is a 5% CTR. Knowing your click-through rate is important because it shows how effective a brand’s first impression is, how many potential customers could be converted, and how much money companies may miss out on without optimizing their approach. By tracking CTR meticulously, businesses can test different content approaches to find what engages their audience.
What if you have a high click rate, but low sales?
Even if you have a high CTR, if those numbers are not translating to sales, “it’s a sign something is breaking after the click,” Hartman says. In other words, it’s an indicator that something at the bottom of your marketing funnel is not working.
Musumeci agrees that a high click-through rate combined with low conversions is a signal that there is a disconnect between the content and the consumer. “Either your offer isn’t clear, your landing page isn’t converting, or your audience isn’t warmed up enough,” she says. For instance, sometimes landing pages can be slow to load, and a company can be losing conversions for reasons outside of brand messaging.
Regardless, it’s vital to figure out what the disconnect is. As Musumeci says, “What matters most is what happens after the click.”
Is a 6% click-through rate good?
Generally speaking, a 6% CTR is considered good. In fact, once a business has reached this threshold, Hartman recommends focusing on conversion rate optimization. Again, this is especially important if sales do not match up with clicks. “Review your messaging, call-to-actions, and page layout,” he suggests. “Try different offers or page layouts. You can also split your traffic into groups and speak more clearly to what each group is looking for.”
