In your quest for a higher click-through rate, you may be losing money

When sitting down to design a digital ad campaign, the question most marketers ask themselves first is, “What will make someone really want to click on this?” And subsequently, when analyzing the performance of a digital ad campaign, many marketers ask themselves, “What can I do to boost this click-through rate?”[/intro]

They are both important questions to ask, but there is more to consider.  Sure it is important to design an ad that will grab attention and elicit a response, but what if your ad is too good? If you are using a pay per click advertising platform and are concerned about more than just impressions, you may be losing money if a lot of those clicks aren’t converting to sales (or some other predetermined desired outcome).

For example, if you are a marketer running a digital ad campaign to promote an upcoming workshop on how to improve Facebook advertising performance, a natural go-to lead-in would be, “Do you want to learn how to optimize your Facebook ad spend?” But with the prevalence of free content out there, what you might encounter is a whole bunch of people who think “Yes, I do!” and click on your ad expecting to find some quick tips and tricks. You have just paid for those clicks but may experience quite a significant drop-off at that point when they realize what you really want is for them to sign up for a workshop.  In other words, your “carrot on a stick” looked a little too tasty.

On a limited budget, you always want to get the most bang for your buck. In a pay per click world, the “bang” is in conversions. So next time, ask yourself if your imagery and messaging will both attract the right people clicking and prime them accurately.