One of the best metrics to follow to understand how your audience is responding to your ads is to measure the click-through rate (CTR).
Knowing your Facebook ad’s click-through rate will provide a good indicator of how good your creatives are and whether you’re targeting the right audience.
In this article, you’ll learn how to use the click-through rate metric on Facebook to optimize ads, and why the click-through rate is important to your ad’s success.
Ultimately, the main metric you want to follow for every Facebook campaign is your return on investment (ROI).
I mean, what good is a 95% click-through rate if your ROI after spending $5,000 is $0?
The Facebook click-through rate should not be used as a metric to determine if your ad is successful.
The click-through rate should be used as a benchmark when optimizing winning campaigns.
For example, if you’re running a campaign that is returning a 10% ROI with a 1% click-through rate, then to increase your ROI you’ll need to increase your click-through rate. If 1% of visitors is driving a 10% return, then if you double your CTR there’s a high probability that your ROI will increase into the 11-20% range.
The more users that click your ad, the more Facebook knows that your campaign is of relevance, which will also lower your CPC and CPA.
There are three things you can do to increase the CTR on your Facebook ads. They are as follows:
Refine your audience – The click-through rate is measured on percentage. For example, if your advert has 5,000 impressions and 35 people click through to your website or app, your click-through rate is 0.7%.
To increase your CTR through audience refining is to remove users who are least likely to click your advert. You can refine your audience in many ways. For example, if data shows that women aged between 30 and 45 are providing you with the most clicks, then you may want to exclude everyone else and focus on that segment (assuming these clicks lead to your intended conversion).
You may want to exclude anyone who has previously clicked your ad as the chances of them clicking again is small, and exclude others who are further in your funnel as they have already consumed the message.
By targeting the highest quality audience, your click-through rate will increase.
The downside to refining audiences is that it makes campaigns harder to scale. The more you refine your audience, the smaller your audience becomes.
Placements – Facebook will provide you with data on click-through rates by placement. Depending on your product, how warm your audience is, and your ad goal, it will impact your click-through rate. For example, lifestyle shots are more likely to be clicked through on Instagram than the right-side column, whereas a free download for an eBook will usually get more click-throughs on Facebook than on Instagram (Instagram is a lifestyle platform).
Advert copy – The final and most effective way to increase the click-through rate on Facebook ads is to edit your advert copy and ad unit types.
DPA ads tend to offer the best click-through rate when retargeting users based on their website behavior, whereas instant articles are best when serving your audience content in the form of blog posts.
Carousel and Collection ad units are also suited when serving product-style posts.
The images and the creative text you use will play a huge role in increasing click-through rates on Facebook ads, and this area is where you should test the most.
You can learn how to write better Facebook ad copy by reading my article, How to Write Better Facebook Ad Copy.
If your campaign objective is to maximize the views of your video or to reach as many people as possible, there’s little point at looking at your ad’s click-through rate as it has nothing to do with your objective as Facebook isn’t optimizing for clicks.
If you’re trying to drive opt-ins or sales by sending traffic to a landing page, now the click-through rate of your Facebook ad becomes an important metric to follow and optimize.
How do you use Facebook click-through rates when running your campaigns, and what is your best tip for increasing the CTR of ads on Facebook and Instagram?
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