How to Measure Click-Through Rate to Identify Growth Opportunities

A recent survey from HubSpot revealed that 85% of marketers say generative AI would change how they create content. Digital marketing tactics indeed evolve along with technology. 

However, success is still monitored by the same key metrics. Measuring the click-through rate for a website, affiliate ads, and email marketing is crucial for the success of your business. 

If you’re unfamiliar with click-through rate (CTR), read on. We’ll explain how to measure click-through rates. We’ll also cover how to optimize your affiliate, referral, and influencer marketing efforts and achieve your growth goals. 

What Is Click-Through Rate?

Click-through rate measures the performance of your digital marketing campaigns. It’s a metric that tracks clicks for ads and other links. 

CTR is based on how many users view the link vs. how many actually click on the target link. Click-through rates can be used to assess co-branded landing pages, marketing emails, ads, and other campaigns.

In general, the CTR for any link helps determine whether things like your ad copy are optimized and if you’re targeting the right audience. Sounds useful, right? Now, let’s learn how to measure click-through rates for your affiliate advertising and other marketing campaigns.

How to Measure Click-Through Rate

Measuring click-through rates is pretty straightforward. You only need two numbers to calculate the metric.

• Impressions: the number of times a link appears on a user’s screen and is considered “viewed”

• Clicks: the number of times the viewed link is clicked

Here’s the formula for calculating the click-through rate:

CTR = (Number of Clicks / Number of Impressions)× 100%

Let’s look at an example for clarity. Let’s say you have a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign with Google Ads. The ads appear for target users in search engine page results (SERPs) and on affiliate partner’s websites. 

Thanks to web traffic, your campaign ads garner 20,000 impressions. That sounds good. However, the campaign only sees the CTA links clicked 400 times.

To calculate CTR, take 400 clicks, divide by 20,000 impressions, and multiply by 100 to get a click-through rate of 2%.

On its own, a CTR is merely a number. It’s given more context when compared to industry benchmarks, competitors, and your own established baseline.

What Is a Good Click-through Rate?

There isn’t a magic click-through rate that determines ad effectiveness and success. Average click-through rates vary by industry. 

For example, a dental office may expect a much lower click-through rate than a travel agency. According to a Google Ads benchmark report from Wordstream, average click-through rates in 2024 for those two industries were 5.38% and 10.16%, respectively. 

What entails a “good” CTR also depends on the marketing channel and ad type you’re using. 

Consult resources such as the above when measuring click-through rates for your referral marketing and other campaigns. CTR benchmarks will help you determine where your ads are at and where you want them to be.

Why Is Click-Through Rate Important?

Click-through rate is important for your business because it helps you understand how well your marketing content is performing. 

You wouldn’t partner with affiliates without tracking attribution metrics, would you? So why wouldn’t you want to know if your ads are enticing consumers to take action and visit your website’s landing pages?

By measuring and monitoring click-through rates, a business will be able to:

Track Engagement

Impressions mean your PPC and SEO campaigns are getting views. However, clicks signify users who find your ads, email copy, and CTAs relevant and compelling. 

CTR gives a snapshot view of how well your target audience is engaging with your content. Combine this data with lead-tracking tools to get a comprehensive view of your marketing channels.

Improve Marketing Performance

You can’t improve something unless you know where it stands. Compare your measured results against established baselines and benchmarks. Average CTRs make it easy to identify campaigns and content that need improvement.

Strengthen SEO

Your search engine optimization strategy is perpetually pursuing a moving goalpost. Use the CTR metric to identify patterns and trends in content that garner more clicks. Apply these insights to your overall SEO efforts and get better results in organic campaigns.

Gain a Better Return on Ad Spend

While it’s called pay-per-click, most ad platforms will charge you for both impressions and clicks. Affiliate and referral marketing channels are more likely to pay only for clicks, actions, and conversions. 

Regardless, getting more clicks per ad means a better return for any up-front investment, such as marketing research and staff overhead. 

Businesses like yours are always looking for a competitive advantage. A healthy bottom line enables you to invest in other areas and continuously innovate. 

Raise Quality Score

Digital advertising platforms, such as Google Ads, create a quality score from 1 to 10. This score ranks and evaluates your content, including ads. When your CTR meets or exceeds expectations, the algorithm deduces that your ad is relevant to users. 

As users spend on your landing pages, your quality score goes up. The greater your engagement, the likelier your targeted ads and organic SEO pages will reach your audiences.

Increase Conversion Rate

A click doesn’t mean conversion, but you know that marketing is a numbers game. If more prospects click on your links, you have more selling opportunities. 

Additionally, efforts to optimize your ads for CTR often result in reaching more of your target audience with an intent to buy.

Boost Partner Marketing 

Social media influencers, affiliates, and other marketing partners choose brands like yours because you share an audience. There are plenty of options for marketing partners to choose from. 

While they join forces with those who sell the products they use, they also want income from high-performing campaigns. Increasing click conversions means you both earn money and strengthen the brand-affiliate relationship.

Identifying Growth Opportunities by Optimizing CTRs 

You spend a huge amount of resources on your marketing efforts. Worldwide digital ad spending is projected to eclipse $870 billion in 2027.

                                                     

No matter the size of your marketing budget, you always want to get more for less. Let’s examine how measuring and monitoring click-through rates can help you grow your business. 

Assess Ad and Email Campaign Performance

How do you normally assess ads and email campaigns? Do you and your team read through them and pat yourself on the back? Doubtful. We’d guess you save the verdict until results start pouring in. 

CTR is a significant performance metric for both ad and email campaigns. It provides a clear, objective view of how compelling your message is to your audience. 

Poor or lackluster rates are the first indication that something is wrong with your content. What exactly is wrong? It could be one or more elements, such as your subject lines, content, calls-to-action, or link placement. 

Alternatively, a high proportion of users who click on ad links indicates you’re doing something right. Ads that perform well inform better decision-making. 

For example, a high affiliate ad CTR suggests that users find your content engaging and are motivated to take the desired action, such as visiting a landing page or making a purchase. 

After assessing the data, you discover that affiliate ads placed above the fold on partner websites have higher CTRs. You then apply this knowledge to improve poor-performing partner ads.

By regularly monitoring CTR, marketers can assess which campaigns are successful in driving traffic and which need adjustments. 

Additionally, analyzing CTR alongside other metrics, such as conversion rates and bounce rates, provides a comprehensive view of campaign performance, enabling marketers to fine-tune their strategies for optimal results.

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Segment Your Audience

Another way to identify growth opportunities is to segment your audience. How do you accomplish this? 

Tap into Google Analytics and other marketing segmentation tools. Use these platforms to gather data on website and landing page visitors. 

Once you have traffic information, you can break your audience down based on demographics, such as age, gender, occupation, and geographic location. If you’re in B2B, use firmographics such as organization size and market share. 

Visualize the data and identify trends. Maybe, CTR is higher for Millennials than Gen X. If that’s the case, how can you create targeted ads to reach older audiences?

You can also segment your audience based on user behavior or source. Maybe, you get a higher click-through rate from some influencer partners than you get from others. 

Look closer at each partner to discover the root cause for varying success. You might find out you’re working with the wrong social media influencers. 

Audit Your Target Keywords

Ads with a low CTR can fail for many reasons. A common culprit is the inability to reach the right audience because you’re not using optimal keywords. 

Use tools like the Google Keyword Planner or the Ahrefs Keywords Explorer (pictured below) to further examine your target keywords. 

Oftentimes, content keywords need only minor adjustments or improvements. For example, let’s say you sell online guitar lessons. Currently, your keyword targets include the phrase “learn a musical instrument.” 

It appears that many impressions are from users who play an instrument other than the guitar. Switching ad copy to focus only on learning to play guitar increases your CTR, increasing ad spend efficiency.

Follow a similar process to audit the keywords for every piece of ad and SEO content. Focus on the keywords with higher CTRs and identify related targets for building campaigns. 

The audit process optimizes your keyword strategy while helping you better reach your intended audience segments. 

Optimize Copy Including CTAs

Keywords are usually the first line of defense against a poor CTR. Even if your ad or landing page is viewed by a user, you need to give them a reason to spend more than milliseconds glancing at your content. 

How do you capture their attention long enough to sell your brand or product? It’s all about the copy. Examine the copy for every poor performer in your ad campaigns.

While GenAI and transformer models can help speed up content generation, they can also lead to dull and overly simple copy. Regardless of your team and the tools you use, all ad copy can always use a refresh.

Check the following when auditing ad copy:

• Spelling and grammar: This seems a no-brainer, but any errors or typos will hurt your credibility and put off potential customers. A simple misspelling can mean lights out for CTR.

• Relevance: Is the content relevant for the target keyword and intended audience? It’s also important that everything in the ad or on the landing page is up-to-date and accurate.

• Clarity and conciseness: Are headers, paragraphs, and CTAs clear and to the point? An ad or feature snippet needs to be comprehensive yet succinct. 

• Persuasive and enticing: Does the copy compel users to read more and click through to the next page? Good ad copy sells benefits and makes an appealing offer to prospects.

• Call to action: Does every piece of content include a clear and visible call to action? CTAs should be engaging and encourage users to take the desired action immediately. An excellent call to action nudges users over the edge of commitment into clicking on that precious link. 

Get Creative with A/B Testing

Every marketer is familiar with A/B testing. While CTR can highlight the performance of your affiliate marketing and paid ads, it doesn’t necessarily tell you how to optimize content. That part is up to you. You and your marketing team are the creatives, right?

Use experimentation to iterate and validate any changes you make up to this point. A/B test when targeting ads for different audience segments; A/B test when targeting different but related keywords; A/B test copy and CTA versions.

Those are the main components of your campaigns. A/B testing lets you go much further. Test out elements such as font size, colors, placement, button types, or anything else you fancy. 

With each experiment, you’ll be sharpening your PPC and partner marketing ads to cut through even the most competitive markets. 

Improve the User Experience

The easiest way to add more growth opportunities is to reduce friction in the buyer’s journey. In other words, you want to improve the user experience (UX) for prospective customers. Click-through rates inform you when ads aren’t meeting audience expectations.

Once you’ve made it this far, re-evaluate your content by viewing it from UX. What’s it like for website visitors who interact with your landing pages? What’s the experience for people who see your ads on affiliate sites? Is content showing above the fold? Are ads optimized for both mobile and desktop?

You can go deeper into UX insights with user behavior analytics platforms, such as Hotjar. Use these tools to identify difficulties and frustrations that may prevent consumers from clicking through on your ads.

Monitor Click-Through Rate and Measure the Results

Click-through rate is a simple metric to understand. Below the surface, however, lies a deeper level of understanding about your ads and the customers you hope to resonate with. We’ve explained how to measure click-through rates. You’re convinced of the metric’s value. 

Now, it’s up to you to follow the tips in this guide. Let CTR be your guide as you audit your emails, affiliate ads, and other content. 

Monitor success as you make improvements, iterate, and continue to optimize your campaigns. Before you know it, your competitors will envy your click-through rate as they struggle to keep up. 

Wrapping Up

So there we have it: measuring and monitoring click-through rates can help you grow your business as long as you do it right. On the surface, CTR is a simple metric to understand. Beyond this, however, lies a deeper level of understanding about your ads and the customers you hope to resonate with. We’ve explained how to measure click-through rates. You’re convinced of the metric’s value. 

Now, it’s up to you to follow the tips in this guide. Let CTR be your guide as you audit your emails, affiliate ads, and other content. 

Monitor success as you make improvements, iterate, and continue to optimize your campaigns. Before you know it, your competitors will envy your click-through rate as they struggle to keep up. 

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14-day free trial with Tapfiliate today!