Some experts say the best measure of marketing performance (which is often difficult to analyze) is how many people you encourage to take the next step: thus showing commitment and a willingness to further engage with you.
Compare that to vanity metrics that don’t have much meaning such as followers, likes, and shares. After all, just because someone engages with your company doesn’t mean he or she has much of an interest beyond that.
However, if consumers take the next step you ask them to, that’s a much more powerful sign of interest. It’s for this reason that a good click-through rate (CTR) will likely indicate decent sales on that keyword as well.
Check out these reasons why you’re perhaps not achieving the click-through rate you want:
The first thing any searcher sees is your ad title. It’s big and blue: possibly right at the tippy top of search results. Every word you use counts, and the precise words you say can greatly impact clicks.
Even if you communicate the same idea, you can see dramatically different results by switching up the words you use. Aim to utilize language your customers might use to describe the products and services you offer—in turn summoning the best results.
It’s nice when you pinpoint a keyword you can bid low on and yet still rank high for that term. If you target lots of keywords, you’ll undoubtedly need to adjust your bid upwards for a couple of them.
Remember, Ads is Google’s big moneymaker: so they’ll do everything in their power to make sure those bids stay high and keep the company uber-profitable.
“Ad extensions”—which allow you to make slight improvements to your ads—can actually boost your CTR quite a bit. However, these are only displayed when you rank in the top two positions for your target keywords.
A call extension, for example, enables you to place your phone number directly in your ad text. Meanwhile, “sitelinks” provide you with the ability to promote additional links on your ad. These methods may seem insignificant but are actually quite powerful with respect to helping your CTR; and many more extensions exist beyond just these examples.