With the marketing landscape constantly changing and advertising costs rising, it’s important to understand exactly how your ads are performing, and whether your ad spend is being spent wisely. Over 80% of buying journeys begin on search engines, making Google ads one of the most profitable marketing channels. Put this opportunity to work by ensuring that you’re measuring campaigns accurately, and using the following search campaign benchmarks to refine your strategy for optimal results.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
One of the most telling metrics when it comes to analysing how well your ad resonates with your target audience is click-through rate. It indicates the ratio of clicks to impressions in the SERP. Getting a user actually on your page purely from well-written copywriting is half the battle when it comes to getting those conversions.
💡 The overall average CTR in Google ads for 2024 is 6.42% but it’s important to keep in mind that this changes industry to industry.
If you’re looking at your ads account now and are beginning to question how to improve this, you’re in the right place! Competition is increasing as technology advances with AI such as Alexa and Siri. Using keywords, headlines and descriptions optimised for voice search and hitting customers' pain points and queries makes your ads much more clickable. Attention spans are shortening and users simply want something relatable that speaks directly to their heart.
Cost Per Click
CTR and cost per click go hand in hand and factor into one another. Cost per click refers to how much you have spent for one user click on your ad and depending on your bidding strategy, CTR and industry this can vastly differ.
💡The average cost per click in Google ads for 2024 is £3.65
Cost per click has seen a steady increase over the last few years due to external factors such as inflation, industry-specific demand and competition from humans and AI. However, there are still optimisations that you can make. Tightly align your landing page with keywords to get a high-quality score which not only decreases costs, but bumps you up the SERP to show your ad first.
Cost Per Conversion
A conversion does not have to be an e-commerce purchase and can also be a form signup or document download. This is arguably one of the most important metric depending on your marketing goals as it tells how many ad clicks turn into real sales or leads.
💡The average conversion rate in Google ads in 2024 is 6.96%
Advertisers need to be savvy in making the most of ad spend by focusing the budget on the highest intent keywords to maintain strong conversion rates, which can prove to be difficult on tighter budgets.
Analysing and strategising around existing data is most important here, such as finding correlations between metrics and trying to paint a picture to understand your customer journey better. For example, if you are struggling with a low conversion rate but a high cost per click, you need to try and get more clicks at a lower cost to get you half way there to securing a conversion.
Using the above data as averages can help you make more informed decisions about your pay-per-click marketing and advertising. It’s important to frequently take the time to reflect and understand your performance data.
At mira, we ensure our clients are always in the loop with weekly touch points and monthly reporting calls. We’re a digital marketing agency based in Newcastle Upon Tyne that specialise in everything from Google Ads to paid social to email marketing. Interested to see the success we can bring to your business? Get in touch today for a free consultation.