What are your click through rates telling you?

As I've become more and more involved with online marketing, I've begun to realize that some statistics that may initially seem insignificant can be hiding important information. For example, the "click through rate" or CTR. CTR generally refers to the number of clicks that your banner ad or sponsored search engine link received, divided by the number of impressions (the number of times your ad was shown to web visitors). So, if your sponsored link on Google was shown to 1,000 people, and 10 clicked through to your website, then you have a CTR of 1%.

At first, I thought that CTR was an unimportant consideration, especially with regards to paid search campaigns. Since you only pay for the clicks, why should I be worried if 1,000,000 saw the ad, but only 10 clicked through? I didn't pay for the 999, 990 other impressions, so what does it matter, right?

Wrong. An extremely low CTR can be an indicator that your paid search campaign has not been optimized to its full potential. If your ad copy and keywords are properly aligned, then your ad should be extremely relevant to those who are seeing the ad, and therefore should be generating a strong CTR.

So what IS a good CTR? Now THERE's a good question. It depends heavily on your industry, the keywords on which you're bidding, your competition, etc. In general, however, anything over 1% is usually acceptable. I've found, however, that particularly relevant and well-placed online advertising can generate CTRs up to 8%! Try getting that kind of a response with a direct mail campaign!

Bottomline: high relevance = high CTR. High CTR means more traffic, which hopefully means more business for you!

The Moment of Relevance

I was recently at the University Continuing Education Association Annual Marketing Seminar in Scottsdale, AZ. At the conference, Stefan Tornquist of Marketing Sherpa talked about online marketing in terms of "The Moment of Relevance." This idea really resonated for me.

So, what is the moment of relevance? It's that special moment in time when a consumer is searching for a specific product or service - one that YOU offer. The science and art of online marketing is about making certain that your product/service comes up when the consumer searches the internet. That sounds easy enough, right? Wrong.

There are a lot of factors to consider:

• Have you optimized your site for search engines? In other words, have you found out what keyword phrases your customers are typing into Google at their moments of relevance, and are you then making sure that those keywords are well represented in your title, description, and page-text? Is it working?
• Are you running a paid search campaign on the search engine that the consumer has chosen to use? Google has over 60% of the market share, but if you're only on Google, you could be missing out on 40% of your potential consumers?
• Is your site attractive, functional, and up-to-date? If any of these are missing, it could mean missing a moment of relevance?
• How are you interacting with your customers? Are you available for a live chat? Do you talk to them on your blog? Are you taking advantage of the many other ways to get noticed online like squidoo.com?

These are just a few of the many things to consider to capitalize on "The Moment of Relevance." What other ideas do you have?