My Ads are Getting Impressions but No Clicks

Reasons Why Your PPC Ads May Have Low CTR

Pay-per-click (PPC) Ads that get a high number of impressions but low or no clicks is a common marketing woe referred to as low click-through-rate, or low CTR. Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is a percentage describing the number of times your ad is seen versus the number of times your ad is clicked on, so when your ads receive few or no clicks, your CTR is directly affected.

Considering an ad’s CTR factors into almost all aspects of your ad campaign, including quality score and ad spend as well as all possibility of increasing conversions, a low CTR can make marketers and business owners feel frustrated and helpless. Luckily, many of the reasons why this happens have relatively simple solutions.

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Ad Placement

When we think about where we see ads, we typically think of the most visible placements. Some areas that may come to mind are the placements we see the most; the top of a search engine results page, front-and-center on social media, or stapled across the very top of an article or video link.

While the ad placements described above are common, the list only represents a few of the more premium ad positions. Less ideal ad placements can also include: the very bottom of a search results page, the lower sidebar of an article or video link, or even a section of a social media feed that a user has little chance of scrolling through.

Less than ideal ad placements on Google or social media can affect your ad’s CTR for various reasons and can also be caused by a number of different factors. Poor ad quality score, a low bid on keywords or on the ad itself, or even ad content that has weak relevance to its landing page. We’ll discuss how to improve these measures in the next section.

Compelling Content

One of the more obvious reasons for a low CTR is that your ad does not contain content that is compelling enough for users to click on it. Whether your ad contains text, display imagery, or a combination of both, how your content speaks to your audience can make a world of difference in the success of your ad.

Having compelling content directly correlates to how well your ad is received, leading to how often users interact with it. Increased ad clicks and interaction lead to an improved CTR. A higher CTR can also indirectly lead to improved ad performance over time by raising the ad’s quality score and improving conversions and sales for your business. We’ll discuss some methods for improving your ad’s content in the section below.

Check out our YouTube video below when our team discusses why your Google Ads may have a low Click-Through-Rate.

How to Increase Ad Click Through Rate (CTR)

Competitor Analysis

It may go without saying, but reviewing and analyzing your competitors’ PPC ads can provide you with detailed insight into what is happening in your industry. If you are seeing one of your competitor's ads, the odds are that it’s doing relatively well.

Though it may seem like taking a shortcut, studying your competitors’ advertising tactics, language, and concepts is one of the most common and streamlined ways to perform market research. Analyzing the ways your competitors advertise and creating something unique using your own brand’s marketing style, language, and voice is one of the most streamlined ways to improve your ad campaigns.

Improve Ad Copy

One of the most common ad copy blunders leading to low CTR involves using language or imagery in your Google ads that fails to inform the user about what they want to hear.

One example is if you have an ad group that includes several keywords meaning the same thing. Take, for example, the following keyword set: ad agency, ad company, and ad firm. For obvious reasons, it may be difficult to use all of the words listed for each piece of ad copy. However, despite each of the terms meaning the same thing, the searcher will be seeking only the exact phrase they’ve already entered. For this reason, having a different ad group for each keyword variation that pairs with a different set of ad copy for each variation may help improve your CTR for each specific ad group.

While this may seem a bit tedious, taking advantage of any tools available that allow you to duplicate and edit your Google ads will save you a lot of time in creating ad groups and ad copy for similar search terms.

In addition to keyword variations, including a compelling offer as part of your PPC ads’ Call-to-Action (CTA) can also significantly improve the way your ad is received, thus improving your CTR. If you are currently using more generic CTAs such as “Call Now,” try using something like “Call For a Free Consultation” or “Find Out How by Clicking Here.”

One under-rated tactic for improving your ad copy is to relate it directly to your landing page and visa-versa. Search engines and social media platforms are more likely to trust ad content if it matches or lines up with the ad’s landing page. Though this concept may take a little longer to yield results, the practice of relating your ad copy to your landing page will help build a strong foundation for the long-term success of your campaigns and your overall brand.

Increase Keyword Bids

Depending on how you look at it, increasing your keyword bids can either be the easiest or the most challenging way to improve your CTR. Keeping keyword bids low may come down to a matter of staying on budget or even balancing your Return-on-Investment (ROI).

However, if competitors are bidding higher on keywords or ads than you are, there is a good possibility that your PPC ads will be given less than ideal ad placement or appear at slower times of the day or week.

The best course of action for keeping competitive keyword bids is by performing in-depth keyword research before starting your campaign. Using tools such as SEMRush or Google Keyword Planner, you can find insights about which keywords are common for your industry, estimates, averages on how much competitors are bidding, and keyword difficulty scores. This data is crucial for helping you strategize which keywords may be viable for your business, as well as what type of budgets and bids to set for your campaigns.

Increase Ad Quality Score

Though it doesn’t mean much on its own, increasing your ad quality score is the best way to ensure your PPC ads receive prime placement and scheduling so that your target audience can interact with your ad, leading to an improved CTR.

While increasing your ad score is not as simple as improving one thing or another, it’s essential to practice careful and continual ad optimization, starting with the tactics above. Over time, the success and trust your ads receive will help increase your ad scores, which will only help further improve your ad campaigns’ success.

Reach Out for PPC Ads Management

Navigating your Google ads platforms and researching tactics and concepts to improve the success of your PPC ads is an essential step in improving your ad campaigns. However, it’s likely that you simply don’t have the time or resources to spend on enhancing PPC advertising efforts for your business.

This is why we offer PPC Ads Management for growing businesses! Start improving your Social Media and Google Ads campaigns. Reach out to Denverdata Web today to ask about PPC Campaign Management Services.