What is a Click-Thru Rate?

If you can’t tell if your marketing is working, then you might be wasting your money. Thankfully, marketers are advancing the field of analytics where it’s possible to know whether or not your marketing is effective.

Marketing in the 21st Century is predominantly digital marketing. And in digital marketing, one of the most important metrics is known as a Click-through Rate, or CTR.

What is a Click-through Rate (CTR)?

Various digital platforms can track page, ad, or post views and compare those views against link clicks. This ratio of views to clicks is known as the click-through rate, or CTR. 

CTR is one of the most critical metrics in marketing analytics and demonstrates a basic understanding of customer calls-to-action. By equipping every page, ad, or post aimed at acquiring leads and customers with a link and call-to-action, marketers can track those link clicks and gain insights on the effectiveness of a particular campaign.

What is a Good Click-through Rate?

The obvious next question becomes, what constitutes a “good” or respectable CTR? Unfortunately, this is not an easy question to answer. Deep-divers on Google will discover that 2% is generally considered the benchmark between a good or bad CTR.

An acceptable CTR varies based on whether you host a link on a web page, digital ad, or social media post. When measuring ROI, a “good” CTR will rise and fall depending upon how much you spent on a particular campaign.

The most common scenarios where CTRs matter in digital marketing are:

• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
• Email marketing
• SMS marketing
• Landing pages (or marketing automation)
• Social media marketing

Pay-per-click CTR

Ad spend in a PPC campaign depends upon the audience and keywords you target. The higher the cost, the greater your CTR will need to be for your campaign to be a success.

Many PPC CTRs average between 1-3%. Again, you could receive higher or lower CTRs and still achieve positive ROI depending upon the advertising costs.

Email CTR

A good email CTR generally falls within the 1-3%, as well. The great thing about email marketing is that it is cheaper than most other forms of digital marketing. Additionally, your emails go out to those that opted-in to your messages.

SMS CTR

Formerly thought to be a spammy way to connect with customers and clients, SMS marketing now leads most other digital marketing channels with an average CTR of almost 20%. As buyers go mobile and text message marketers use more reliable delivery methods, people are warming up to this medium, and the CTRs speak for themselves.

Landing Page CTR

For those brands using automation software and sequencing, landing page CTRs guide customers through the buyer’s journey. A good landing page CTR can fall somewhere between 1.5-4% depending upon your industry and the quality of your landing page content.

Social Media CTR

Like email marketing, social media marketing is one of the cheapest ways to build your list of prospects. There is no standard CTR for social media posts besides the digital marketing standard of 2%.

In Conclusion

Calculating and monitoring your CTRs across your various owned and paid media channels will help you understand the state of your digital marketing. From this baseline, you can optimize your channels to raise your CTRs and achieve greater success.