What Is Click-Through Rate (CTR), and How to Calculate It

As a marketer, you need to know as much as you can about your audience in order to get them to interact with your company and purchase your product or service.

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There are plenty of metrics that will help you measure the performance of your efforts and click-through rate (CTR) might just be the most important one. However, if you're new to the game, understanding CTRs can be tricky.

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To help you understand click-through rates, we've written this article explaining everything about them, including how to calculate and increase them. Before you know it, you'll be able to improve your marketing campaigns and bring up your rate.

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What Is a Click-Through Rate (CTR)?

Click-through rates will be the most important part of any digital marketing campaign run. 

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Technically, a click-through-rate can apply to anything that can be clicked – but most commonly it's a metric to measure the performance of the ads are that point back to your website. Practically all ad platforms including Meta and Google will display the number of users that have clicked on your ads or calls to action out of the entire figure of people who viewed your ad as represented by the number of impressions. This formula has been the most important in advertising for over two decades:

(Total Clicks / Total Impressions) x 100 = Click Through Rate (%)

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Your click-through rate increases when you get more clicks on the advertisements on your website. As you start to get an increased number of clicks on your ads, you'll notice your CTR start to grow.

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If you take a look at all the ads you're running on your site, the ones with a big CTR would be considered the most successful because your viewers are interacting with them. You'll be able to leverage your audience with these details and learn how to make them perform certain actions that bring in more profits for you.

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An Example: How to Calculate Your Click-Through Rate (CTR)

If you want to calculate your own click-through rate (CTR), also called click rate, you can easily follow the formula below.

• Divide the number of clicks on a campaign by the number of impressions it got.
• Multiply the result by 100.
• And there you have your click-through rate (CTR).

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Let's give you a real-life example to make it sound easier. Say you launch an ad campaign on Google Ads, and it gets a total number of 3000 impressions and 120 clicks; this is the way you calculate your CTR.

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(120 clicks divided by 3000 impressions) x 100 = 4%

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What Would Be Considered a Favorable Click-Through Rate?

Everyone's click-through rate will be different. You might have a high click-through rate, but your website's niche could be quite competitive, so it's actually not as valuable as you might have thought.

The average click-through rate can vary greatly by platform and channel.

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Links in emails for example have some of the highest click-through rates which is why newsletter sponsorships tend to  have a higher CPM than other mediums. Of the more common ad platforms, Google Search is known to have a higher CTR than Facebook and display ads on a site tend to have some of the lowest.

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A general rule of thumb is that your click through rate should be around 1% - 2%, but you should always take into account things like the way you've advertised (e.g., images) and the advertising platform you've used (e.g., Facebook). They all have an impact on how good your click-through rate is.

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You're better off monitoring the progress of your own click-through rate rather than comparing it to others. If you've noticed yours has risen slightly within the space of a month, you're clearly doing something right with that advertisement that your viewers like. The same thing goes for if it drops, that means whatever you're doing isn't working, so you need to change something.

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Why You Should Care About Your Click-Through Rate

Some marketers refrain from getting too excited about their click-through rates. But it's an important metric that should matter to you for the following reasons:

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It Shows You How Effective Your Campaigns Are

Marketing campaigns are tricky and take some time to master, especially if the product is new. But your CTR can be a good indicator that the keywords or the targeted campaign you're running are going down well with your audience.

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Increased Conversion Rates

After someone clicks on your ad, your next goal will be to get a conversion, which is when a visitor spends some time scanning through your website and completing the site's objective before they leave.

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If you've done all the proper work on your site and are fully confident that you can get them viewers to carry out your site's objective, your conversion rates will eventually increase when they start clicking on your campaigns.

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Your Ad Rank Will Get Better

When you run ads on Google, you're given an ad rank. This metric is a key factor in choosing where your ads are placed in comparison to your competitors. The lower that rank is, the more of a chance your competitor's ads are getting seen first, meaning you're losing more eyes and wasting more money.

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Google looks at your CTR when deciding what your ad rank is. This is because it's an indicator that your ads are meeting the searchers' needs using that specific keyword.

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If you've got a high CTR, this can only benefit you when they take a look at your ad rank.

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Ways to Boost Your Click Through Rate

You may have a low click-through rate now, but that doesn't mean you're stuck with it forever. If you adopt some of these simple methods, you'll be able to increase yours.

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Enhance Your Ad Copy

Ad copy is the first thing people see when they see your advertisement, so you want to catch their attention immediately. 

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You should focus on playing with their emotions and give them what they want by offering a solution to their problem. Get your message across quickly and make them want to learn more about your offering.

Be sure to optimize the headline and description with keywords, too; you want your ad to reach the right customers who are willing to spend money on your product.

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Add a Call to Action (CTA)

If you want a good CTR, your call to action needs to be precise and easy for your audience to understand so they take the desired action you want, whether it's signing up for your newsletter or buying one of your products. 

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Your ad should clearly outline what you want them to do; it can be through compelling copy or a nice element like a button.

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Remember, nobody is going to take action unless they see a benefit in doing so; that's why offering them something like a discount or a freebie can help.

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Integrate Images

Some marketing campaign ads achieve better results when you add images. Imagine if you were to test what captured someone's attention first, either text or a photo; the photo would win because a person wouldn't have to make much effort to notice it. Meanwhile, with text, the person has to focus on it to read it.

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Photos don't work for every advertisement, so you should test them in a couple of places beforehand to see if they're suitable. If you were to add an image and it did more harm than good, you could run the risk of your CTR dropping, so be careful.

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Start Increasing Your Click-Through Rate (CTR) Now!

Click-through rates are fantastic indicators that help you measure the success of your advertising campaigns. We've included the formula to calculate yours in this post to allow you to see how well your ads are performing.

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If you notice yours is low, don't panic yet; start evaluating your ads to see where you're going wrong with a useful tool such as a heatmap that can help you improve your CTR. You can get your free heatmap trial today by clicking here.

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