Hello, community! The numerous metrics in affiliate marketing can be intimidating for many beginners. That’s why we constantly explain all the metrics affiliates encounter in simple Ukrainian. Today, we will talk about CTR and CRO. Although the latter is not a metric, it fits very well into the subject. So, it will be interesting!

Before we begin, we recommend checking out our review on the CLV metric, especially if you plan to get involved in the iGaming vertical.

What is CTR?

CTR (Click-Through Rate) is a key metric in affiliate marketing that reflects the number of clicks on an advertisement or creative. The higher the CTR, the more attention your ad has attracted.

However, it’s important to consider the calculation aspect. You need to understand how CTR is calculated. It’s not just a click counter; it’s also the ratio of ad impressions to clicks. For example, if you placed an ad or banner, it was seen 20,000 times, and clicked on 200 times, then your CTR is 1%. The formula is as follows: divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions and multiply by 100 to get the percentage.

  1. Every affiliate pays close attention to this metric because it directly indicates whether your campaign is working. If you observe a very low CTR, it’s a reason to review:
  2. Creatives. Choose higher quality ones that attract more attention;
  3. The ad copy. Perhaps the lead doesn’t understand why they should click the link;
  4. Even the placement of your link. You might apply A/B testing if you suspect that people simply aren’t seeing the ad, and therefore aren’t clicking on it.

In other words, CTR gives us an understanding of whether we need to optimize the campaign, or if “good enough” is working just fine.

What Should CTR Be?

We hope you now understand what CTR is. But what should it be? High. The higher, the better. Every click on an ad is a potential conversion, and thus, potential profit that we lose when users ignore our ad.

But if you think your CTR is below 50% and that’s a disaster, it’s not. A high CTR is generally considered to be around 9%, which is an excellent rate. On average, it ranges from 3-5%, which is generally considered normal.

It’s also important to note that what constitutes a “good CTR” heavily depends on the niche you’re working in. For some verticals, even 1% can be considered normal, while in others, 10% might not be enough to achieve a profit. So, discussions about high CTR can be somewhat misleading, as there is no definitive benchmark.

What is CRO?

Now, let’s talk about CRO, or Conversion Rate Optimization. It’s used when your CTR is seemingly high, but there are few conversions. CRO is the optimization of transitions, i.e., continuing to work on what you get from CTR.

Even though a high CTR should theoretically lead to increased sales, and thus, a higher conversion rate, sometimes this doesn’t happen.

CRO is a set of solutions aimed at increasing the conversion rate. A specialist, who could be the affiliate themselves, needs to analyze the sales funnel, pay attention to traffic feedback, and consider how the traffic responds to specific elements of the campaign (e.g., landing page) and the brand as a whole. Even the product name can deter someone from making a purchase.

To improve CRO, A/B testing is often conducted, as we mentioned earlier. Sometimes, small changes on the landing page can increase the number of conversions.

All these methods are combined in studying UX and CX. UX stands for user experience, the experience of a person interacting with your product through creatives, the website, and the landing page. CX stands for customer experience, which is more about how the traffic perceives the brand itself. This includes product quality, its image, and even ongoing product support.

Overall, CRO is handled by entire teams. There’s a lot of work involved, from defining the optimization goal, followed by analyzing the current situation, to conducting tests and creating reports that result in a ready-made plan to improve the conversion rate.

Conclusion

If your campaign has a high CTR, that’s already a big success because you’ve managed to attract traffic to your product. But don’t forget to monitor other metrics, particularly conversions. If they are very low compared to your CTR, you need to perform conversion optimization, or CRO.

In the meantime, we hope you found this material useful and learned something new. You can find even more interesting and important information about affiliate marketing in our Telegram community. We’re waiting for you!

Best regards, Your Geek!

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