Why Click Through Rates Should Matter in 2017

This is why it is important to track and analyse the marketing metrics that are relevant to your business. In this blog, we focus mainly on why click-through rates should be the marketing metric you measure in 2017.     
In the past click-through rates have been associated directly with paid search. Now with paid social media marketing becoming a necessity and email marketing essential in eCommerce, click-through rates are a compulsory measure of an array of marketing activities that you are doing.  

What does Click-Through Rate mean?

Put simply your click-through rates represent how well your particular ad or copy attracts the user to your website or offer. These clicks can come from multiple places, originally considered to be a marketing metric that was directly related to paid search campaigns. These are still an important factor as paid advertising you can show the success and the return on your investment. It is also worth considering that your Adwords account pulls through and contributes to the quality score of your adverts, which goes on the impact the Cost Per Click, which bottom line, impacts your ROI.
Measuring this metric offers insight into the success of your campaigns, across different platforms. In your Adwords account, you can gauge the success of your campaign against previous attempts and also against competitors. If you are spending money on any form of marketing you need to know what business that is bringing to your website, it tells you how many visits you receive for each specific element of your campaign, e.g. how many clicks you got for your Facebook Ad or from your email call to action.

Factors affecting Click-Through Rates

When it comes to understanding the success of your marketing the copy and imagery that you use is crucial to your potential success.
The copy and wording you use is one of the most important elements to any campaign, whether in search ads, email or paid social media posts. By analysing this metric you can identify which copy works and which wording may have potentially been too complicated, or long winded for the particular audience it was created for.
A picture speaks a thousand words, so do not forget to include, where possible, relevant images to improve your click-through rates. The relevancy is key here as without the relevant imagery it may appear to be click spam and visits may click through and then leave, which will increase your bounce rate and devalue your ROI.
The next step for increased engagement and clicks, we recommend using video. As 2016 illustrated we as consumers are becoming increasingly impatient and may not read all the information that is in front of us. Offering an educational or promotional video that gives visitors the option to listen to, or as Facebook has proven, provides you with the subtitles to the video, consumers are more likely to pay attention. Therefore I highly recommend that you look into the possibility of creating videos for your brand. Whether this is product videos or how-to videos, a helpful way to think about this content creation is to consider your FAQ’s whereby you can provide the answers in a snappy format.
In 2016, purchases on mobile overtook that on a desktop, searches being conducted on mobiles overtook desktop. Therefore your visitors are most likely to be visiting your site via a mobile device, your website must be created with this in mind. Avoid obstructive pop-ups and hard to click buttons. Creating websites, emails and adverts that are easy to click on provides a better user experience and the better the experience the more likely those clicks will turn into sales.

Click-Through Rates in 2017

This leads us nicely onto some insight within the digital marketing industry on how the industry will look through 2017. As mentioned measuring your click through rate helps you better understand elements of success, but more importantly, it gives exact measurements for so many elements of different campaigns. From here you are able to analyse the cost per engagement of your marketing efforts. Instead of looking at vanity metrics such as impressions, you can provide more accurate analytics and accurate pricing and thereafter explore your return on investment in more detail. Understanding your most effective pieces of content from 2016 allows you to put more budget into those and replicate those styles in future pieced.
There is much to be said about vanity metrics, which have sufficiently provided some insight into the success of your marketing and the content in which you have created. However, vanity metrics are just that, metrics that can be easily manipulated. Once you begin looking beyond these and exploring the data you have available you can understand what is working for your business and which areas of marketing could be improved.
It is time to reevaluate the traditional metrics that you have found yourself tracking even though you are not sure why and ultimately are not sure what their return on investment is. Qualitative metrics and analytics have helped us understand the opportunities and threats that come with marketing, however digital marketing has now become an essential part of marketing and it is important to use quantitative metrics to understand how to fully exploit the potential of your digital marketing campaigns.
Measuring your click-through rates is just one of a selection of metrics you should be measuring in 2017. We have created a handy eBook just for you to make sure that you are measuring the right metrics for your business this year. If you would like to download your free copy of this eBook simply click here.