Why Your High CTR Ads aren’t Converting (And How to Fix Them)

The marketing world is full of… well, marketers.

People who excel in dressing the mundane in a fabulous facade. Persuasive people who can take a mediocre offer and make it look like it’s the deal of the century. Shrewd salesman skilled in selling you a service or feature you don’t necessarily need.

Marketers love to exaggerate.

We love to inflate our own egos by blowing minor achievements out of proportion in case studies and white papers. Attributing monumental success to what is, in reality, a minor improvement.

And it can be damaging. When one person publishes their “radical transformation method” everyone else follows suit. It creates an internet echo chamber explaining how metric X or process Y is the most important thing you need to know about. 

Within the world of PPC, one of those confusing metrics is click through rate (CTR).

There’s a tonne of advice on how to increase your CTR and, whilst it’s important, it’s not as important as most marketers would have you believe.

Why Ad CTR Shouldn’t Be Your Chief Concern

I’m gonna come right out and say it.

If you’re optimising solely for better CTRs, you’re a fool.

CTR is not a bankable currency. Increasing CTR by 200% sounds great and makes for an impressive brag when you’re down the boozer with your mates, but it’s not gonna keep the lights on.

Case in point, a recent Facebook campaign to get the new Facebook page for this site off the ground.

If I were to follow the footsteps of many other marketers I’d cherry pick the most impressive metrics.

• – One simple strategy to increase page likes 433%!
• – How $10 ad spend improved page reach by 45,000%
• – A simple strategy to driving 235% more clicks and engagement

They all sound great, right? But an increase to 16 page likes isn’t impressive, and none of them turned into new business or revenue. They’re vanity metrics that made an insignificant change sound important.

CTR is a similar vanity metric, one often focused on because people believe the higher their CTR the higher their conversion rate (CVR).

It’s true to an extent, but take a look at that statement again. Where is the focus of that strategy? On increasing CTR, or CVR?

CVR right. CTR is rightly viewed as a stepping stone to increasing the more profitable metric of conversions.

When you focus on CTR you’re taking your eye off the revenue-driving goals you should be focusing on. Anyone can optimise an account for better CTR, but that doesn’t offer a predictable return.

But as you’re reading an article talking about high CTRs and low conversions, I’m assuming you know this.

Rather than continue to hammer home the idiocy of focusing solely on CTR, I’m gonna jump into a couple of reasons and fixes for high CTR but low conversion ads.

Selling Ferraris to Teens

I could jump into your account right now and massively increase CTR. All I’d have to do is ignore the ability users have to purchase your product.

For example, let’s imagine you’re a car dealership specialising in luxury cars. To Increase CTR all I’d do is target keywords related to earlier stages of the purchase journey like “How fast is a Ferrari?” and double down by targeting 18-24 year-old men.

You’d get a tonne of clicks, but you’d make no sales and attract no valuable leads because very few 18-24 year-olds are able to afford a Ferrari.

Keyword and audience targeting is the foundation of your account’s success.

Get it wrong and you’re throwing money away by appealing to the wrong people. The question is, how can you target those with a realistic intent to actually purchase?

1 –  Check your search term reports

This is AdWords 101. You should be regularly checking your Search Term reports within AdWords or Analytics for insights into what’s actually triggering your ads, and which terms are leading to conversions.

Here’s where to find the reports.

When you’re seeing what people are searching for, you’re gonna want to look out for a couple of things.

1 – High click but low relevance searches

For example, I recently worked on an account for a heatmap service.

Our heatmap ads were showing up for searches related to the popular video game Player Unknown’s Battle Ground and Strava, who provide geographical heatmaps. We had a tonne of impressions and clicks for terms like:

• PUBG landing heat map
• Strava heatmap 20XX

These aren’t searches from marketing pros looking to understand user behaviour, so were a waste of budget.

We added them to the negative keyword list and saw two things happen. First, overall impressions and CTR took a hit. However, the heat map campaign I had running saw an overall increase in conversions with a lower CPA.

Check your search term reports to thin the low relevancy, high search traffic terms from your account.

2 – Cutting out cheapskates

If you’re selling products or a paid service through AdWords, you’re gonna want to avoid tight fisted gits.

There’ll be a bunch of people who search for related terms with the word “free” attached. Adding the word “Free” and its synonyms to your negative keyword list keeps your ads from triggering on searches like:

• [Your service] free
• [Your service] trial
• [Your service] cheap

Another good method to dissuade free service seekers is to include the price in your ad extensions. Just a little mention of cost can dissuade cheap users from clicking.

Good example from VWO

3 – Your demographic targeting is crap

A while back I worked with an immigration lawyer who specialised in helping foreigners already within the US succeed with their Visa applications.

The key thing to note is that the potential customers had to already be within the US. When I took over the account I was told they were getting a tonne of clicks and a handful of applications from people across the globe, despite targeting only NY state.

Whilst the client was targeting only New York state, his advanced location targeting included “people interested in this area”.

You can find this under settings, click on the “advanced options” and then scroll down. You’ll see this sub section.

A huge number of people who move to the US want to live in New York. And the was reflected in the search terms. People were searching for terms like “New York Immigration Attorney”.

Google took the mention of NY as interest, and so showed the ad to that person regardless of location.

Switching AdWords advanced location targeting to “people in your targeted locations” massively reduced the CTR and thus cost of the account.

Of course overall conversions dropped as well, but overall conversion of those users and ROAS increased as we were then only attracting people our lawyer could help.

Google’s Adwords’ demographic targeting is pretty detailed. However, if you are trying to attract a very particular segment of searches, make sure that you’re not making any errors – even a minor oversight can ruin your chances.

You’re Proposing on the First Date

Much like dating, there’s a natural courtship involved with selling.

You can’t force your product on the consumer the first time you connect with them. It’s too aggressive and rarely works.

You have to think about how well your prospect knows you and what would be a relevant offer and request for your level of relationship.

For example, someone who is only just getting to know your brand is unlikely to sign up for the $1000+ monthly service fee.

They don’t know you, don’t know what you can do for them, and will view this as too large a commitment.

For those first interactions you need to build value and demonstrate the value you can bring. With PPC, that might be in the form of a free whitepaper download.

But again, you have to be careful in how you pitch this to your potential customers.

Think once again of how well they know you and how much they trust you. The less familiar someone is with your brand, the less information they’ll be willing to provide.

For first contacts and whitepaper/eBook/case study downloads I’d recommend only asking for name, email, and perhaps company at the absolute maximum.

Thing is, so many brands don’t do this.

I see ads that push basic content like whitepapers, eBooks, or webinar replays that have 5 or more fields to fill out. Here’s an example from Hubspot for a marketing guide that requires 9 pieces of information, and a final 10th action opt-in.

That’s like turning up on a first date with a questionnaire about your date’s childhood, education, and sexual history on your first date.

It’s too much too soon. Unless you have a reputation like HubSpot’s, few people are invested enough at that point in time to put in that much effort.

So the solution is to reduce form fields down to the bare minimum, right? To get it as close to 1 as possible.

Not quite.

Form fields are an exchange, one which both parties need to come away from as winners.

Reduce your form fields too far and you’re the easy lay. The guy/girl who goes home with anyone, but can’t even hold down a relationship for a week. You’re going to attract low-value leads who never convert to paid accounts.

Too many form fields and it’s too aggressive. You’re the overly picky dater who scares people off through wanting to know their full life history and 10-year plan.

Fortunately there’s a middle ground. One which scares away the low-value leads, but won’t deter potentially profitable partners.

That’s your sweet spot. The question is how to find it.

This is something that’s individual to your business and offering. However, to find it out here’s what you should be doing.

Run an A/B/C test where pitting your current form against a variant with the absolute minimum info required. The final variant form should have the ideal amount of information you need.

Test, and see what works best. Not just for immediate conversions, but for overall revenue gains.

You’re Breaking Your Word

As a kid I was once told that if I was well behaved Santa would bring me exactly what I wanted (an Optimus Prime robot with walkie-talkie attachment).

Thing is, I was anything but a well-behaved kid. My Mum would bust out the Santa threat often to keep me in line. It worked up until a Christmas day when there was no Optimus Prime under the tree.

From that day forward, the threat of Santa had lost all efficacy. Every time my mother would say that I had to do X or she’d tell the jolly big fella, I’d respond with something like “tell him. He doesn’t get me what I want anyway”.

Many PPC advertisers make a similar error in their ads.

They promise that, in return for a click, the user is going to get something. Something they have expressed an interest in.

As soon as you don’t deliver on that promise, you’re going to lose the customer and destroy any trust they may have had with you.

What we’re talking about here is ad scent. Keeping the relationship of your ads and landing pages as close to 1:1 as possible.

When you break ad scent, you’re not just creating a disconnect, but you’re breaking your word.

The below example took me 10 seconds to find. All I did was type “how to” into Google, pick one of the top most search for terms (how to buy bitcoin) and click on the top ad. Here’s how it breaks down.

The search tells the advertiser that I’m looking for advice on how to buy Bitcoin, right? The ad is pretty well tailored to my need with the headline mirroring my primary question back to me.

But once I clicked through, I found the below.

The landing page is an absolute mess. Looks like I’ve been forwarded to a markets page for Bitcoin.

Whilst I’m sure that’s useful for someone who knows what they’re doing, the search term I used makes it pretty evident I don’t. I’m looking for advice here, and the ad promised me they’d help me understand how to buy Bitcoins.

But the landing page does anything but.

When you’re optimising your ads, you want a very close relationship between search term, ad copy, and landing page as possible. Ideally, it needs to be a 1:1:1 relationship all the way through.

If it’s not, you risk breaking your word and pissing people off.

You’re Confusing Your Visitors

PPC is a very direct medium, especially AdWords. You’re targeting people based on what they’re actively searching for.

Someone searches for X, you serve them an ad for X taking them to your landing page that is, unsurprisingly, optimised to sell X.

There’s no confusion there. But often, ads direct users to pages that aren’t only breaking ad scent, but are so confusing that they have no idea what it is you want them to do next.

You’ve got to remember that the modern consumer’s attention span is woefully short. People don’t have time to try and figure out what you want them to do. You have to make their journey through the purchase journey as easy, obvious, and foolproof as possible.

Let’s look at some examples.

After typing copywriter course into Google, I’m presented with the below results.

Out of those top four results three have pretty good landing pages that tell me immediately what I have to do next. Here’s an example of the top result from General Assembly.

You could argue ad scent isn’t great as a copywriting course ad led to a generic digital marketing page, but if we’re looking for clarity of purpose, it’s there.

Right above the fold you have two CTAs, one for those who need information, one for those who are ready to buy.

Again, some targeting issues could be argued (a page for those needing information and one for those ready to sign up), but the fact is the next step is clear.

Now, if we take a look at the page from the DMA, the next steps are less clear.

I’ve highlighted the above the fold section in red. And you can see that, whilst relevancy is good, there’s no apparent action for the user to take.

Even if they scroll down the action isn’t immediately apparent.

At first glance I thought the two boxes with green headers were testimonials thanks to the little images in the corner. But no, if you hover over them you’re prompted to “explore the course”.

It’s a massively missed opportunity and I’d wager it’s a page that doesn’t perform too well.

Golden rules for PPC landing pages are two-fold:

1. Make the next step obnoxiously apparent and easy to take
2. Limit that action to a single yes/no decision

The DMA page offers the user two primary options in checking out each course. I also count 24 other potential clicks and one burger menu.

If we assume each link has an equal chance of getting clicked, then the one action you really want the user take has a 4.17% chance of causing action.

You’ve got to limit your PPC pages to a single goal and decision. In this case, that single action would be:

Do you want to check out/buy the course or not?

Again, if we make the assumption that every decision has an equal chance, each action (yes and no) then has a 50% chance of being taken.

Limit your PPC landing page actions to a yes/no option and make that decision almost too obvious to ignore.

You’re Slinging A Sucky Product

Sometimes even after following all the best practices, running the right tests, and making smart optimisation decisions you’re not going to see conversions increase.

It’s not because you’re a shitty marketer, but it might be because no one wants the product you’re trying to sell.

Before you double down on your ad spend or marketing budget, find out if the problem is with your strategy or with the product.

I’ve been approached in the past by folk who want to grow a service that’s not made any sales in years. They think that throwing money at Google and Facebook is going to be the cure to their problem. In these situations, it rarely helps.

If you’ve been trying for a while and aren’t seeing results despite constant optimisation, your first port of call should always be to ask potential customers what they think.

Instead of using AdWords or Facebook to sell your product, use them to reach your perfect audience with a survey.

Knock up a couple of questions based around your product/service, give users an insight into what they’ll receive, and ask for honest feedback.

Throw $1000 at it and see what comes back. Sure, that $1000 is going to achieve a 0% ROAS, but if it prevents you from wasting thousands more on a product that would never sell, it’s the best investment you could make.

Always Look Beyond Basic Metrics

PPC and CRO are two sides of the same coin, they’re complementary actions.

You could have the best landing page in the world but if no one sees it you’ll get no sales. You could drive countless levels of traffic to your page, but if it’s poorly optimised you’ll see no sales.

CTR is important. It’s half of that PPC equation. But it’s not what you should be optimising for.

If your ads have high CTR and low CVR then the tips in this piece might just be the solution you need.

If you’ve tried the above and are still seeing no increases, let me know through the chat on the right and we’ll see if we can’t find the issue.

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Also published on Medium.