SEM Intermediate Series: Increasing Click-Through Rate (CTR) in Microsoft adCenter

This is the 1^st post in the SEM Intermediate Series, a collection of posts intended for search engine marketing professionals looking for guidance in monitoring and adjusting the key performance indicators (KPIs) that determine the success of a PPC campaign.  This series is a continuation of the SEM Beginner Series.

If you haven’t already visited the SEM Beginner Series post on CTR, click-through rate is a measurement of the number of times an ad displayed on a search engine results page (SERP) is clicked on.  The calculation is as follows:

Number of clicks / Number of impressions = CTR

CTR is one of the most commonly looked at indicators of success when it comes to online marketing.  In most cases (when looking at CTR alone), the higher, the better as it indicates your ads are doing a good job at bringing in clicks.

Troubleshooting Low Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Low CTR is most often a symptom of ads and keywords that aren’t specific or relevant enough to capture a user’s attention and thereby, earn their clicks.  To remedy this, try the following strategies:

1.) Test Different Ads – try out different versions of your ad copy to see which ones drive the most traffic.  Repeat those that have high CTR and delete those that don’t.  Over time, poor performing ads and keywords can drag down the overall performance of your campaign, so be sure to only retain those combinations that are working for you, not against you.

2.) Try Using Dynamic Text – dynamic text helps increase the chances that a user will click on your ad because it can tailor the ad title, description or destination URL to match the keywords entered, making it more relevant to the user’s query.  Whether you want to add some dynamic ads to an existing campaign or you’re starting out from scratch with building a new campaign from the ground up, you should review my previous post, Tips to make sure your dynamic ads appear as capitalized in adCenter to ensure that the dynamic terms appear as you want them to in your ad copy.

3.) Focus Your Ad Groups – the more detailed your ad groups, the better.  Look at how your your web site is set up to get an idea of how to structure your campaign; in most cases, ad groups should be closely related to the more granular levels in your navigation.  If you have a category for blue widgets listed on the main page, but then 3 or 4 options below that main category that describe your different types of blue widgets, use those sub-menu items as a guide for creating ad groups as they’re the most specific.

4.) Use More Specific Ad Copy – again, the more specific and relevant your ads are, both to the keywords associated with them and the landing pages they lead to, the better.  High relevance between what a user is searching for and what your ad tells them they’ll find by clicking on your ad and visiting your site can translate into a higher CTR.  If you have special promotions or discounts that are only applicable for a limited time, call that out in your ad copy; let users know that you’re offering them a deal that beats the competition!

5.) Adjust Match Types – if your CTR is too low, making your match types less exclusive may help increase it.  If you’re only bidding on exact, try changing it over to phrase.  If you’re only bidding on phrase, try switching it to broad.

6.) Add Negative Keywords – you’ve heard the song, you know the lyrics: “There’s a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure, ‘cause you know sometimes words have two meanings”.  That’s what you’re doing with negative keywords; you want to be sure the queries triggering your ads are referring to your products/services, not those with which you share a common keyword that has different meaning when paired with other words.  If you’re running a PPC campaign for a coffee shop, you’re trying to capture traffic for people who are looking for a physical location to grab their morning cup of joe; of course you want your ads to appear for searchers who enter “coffee” as a part of their search query, but not if they’re looking for coffee-related appliances or accessories.  With that in mind, you might consider adding the negative keywords “maker”, “grinder” and “mugs” so that when someone searches for “coffee maker”, your ads will not show.

7.) Try Demographic Targeting – if your product or service is one that has a very specific, niche audience that typically fits certain criteria by age, gender, or location, demographic targeting might be a good option for you to explore.  With demographic targeting, you can opt to automatically increase your bid (by an incremental percentage you select) for searchers that fit the criteria you select.  Refining your audience with targeting could help improve your CTR over time.

I’m sure by now you’ve noticed the theme running through this post: the key to increasing CTR is specificity… you want to get as many clicks as possible in relation to how many times your ads appear.  In order to do that, you need to make sure your ads are being shown to the Bing searchers who are most likely to click on them.

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