Yeah, it’s kinda annoying when you’ve spent so long creating your brand, but no matter how much you try to market it, your click-thru rate remains pretty bad. I’ve been there before. But in those moments of no clicks, I set out on an experiment to see how I could make a difference. Sure enough, I found 3 key techniques that helped my clients and I significantly improve our click-thru rate, ultimately leading to more sales, exposure, and brand growth.
In this article, I’m going to share 3 click-thru rate enhancing techniques that you can incorporate into pretty much any part of your digital marketing strategy.
Offer Value First
If you’re not offering some form of value to your target audience, don’t expect them to click through on your link.
Take the example of a Twitter post. If you simply just place the link to your website within a Tweet and tell your followers to “click to see our site”, most of the time they’re not going to click the link. Why? You haven’t offered them any value. Why would they waste their time clicking if there’s nothing in it for them?
So, this now means you need to find something of value that you can offer your audience within your Tweet. This value offering entirely depends on your business. Take some time to think about what you could offer.
Once you’ve come up with a few good ideas, start creating your valuable content — whether it’s a social media post or landing page. Then, within your post or page content, place your link so users who like the content you’re offering can click to find out more about what you can offer.
However, placing your link in the right context is also very important.
Use Contextual Links
By “contextual links” I mean placing your link somewhere that makes sense.
Too often I see people place their links in places that do not make sense and feel completely forced. I think of this like an undercover cop trying to be “down with the kids” — it’s very jarring and most people can instantly tell the difference between a genuine or forced act.
My point is that it’s important to build context around your link placements so they feel genuine and not forced.
To do this, think of the reason why you’re including your link and how the link relates to the content you are writing. Then, building your content so your link fits in seamlessly. I’ll leave an example below:
“Marketing in 2021 — and any other year for that matter — is all about staying ahead of the curve. Sure, staying on trend is difficult if you’re not using the right tools. Maybe you didn’t even realize that advanced marketing data tools, like MarketingTrends, exist or were so easily accessible. But it’s 2021 and everyone at marketingtrends.com is here to help you boost your marketing strategy.”
Notice how in the example below, we’re not telling anyone to click the link. We’re also not forcing our link into our text. Instead, we’re seamlessly placing the example link into our text so it comes across as natural. The natural inclusion of the link will make readers feel more comfortable clicking the link.
Optimize Your Titles
We’ve spoken about title optimization before on the Intentionally Inspirational blog. This one can be tricky, and it takes a lot of research.
However, taking time to ensure the titles of your webpages, blog content, or even YouTube videos is crucial for improving and maintaining a decent click-thru rate.
First off, think of the keyword or phrases that you’re trying to target for each webpage. Then, look at how you’re ranking versus your competition. If you’re ranking poorly, look at what your high-ranking competitors are doing with their titles.
Now, I’m not encouraging copying your competitors’ titles word for word. But, it’s a good place to look at what is currently working for a specific keyword or phrase, so think of it more as inspiration for your title.
That said, I also want you to look at what you can do better! Are there any gaps you can fill that your competition is currently missing?
One key thing you should look into is using “power words” in your titles. Power words, for those who don’t know, are words that help to increase click-thru rates, as well as engagement. Power words capture the attention of readers and help to better connect with them — if used correctly. Click the link above to get an idea of some power words that you can use in your titles.
Getting Clicks & Keeping Them
Getting more clicks is one thing. However, it’s no good following any of the steps in this article unless the content that users will click through to is good.
Always make sure that whatever is on the other side of your link is valuable to people who click through. There are a few reasons for this, mainly because you want good content to convert users into customers/clients/subscribers/new fans of your brand. The other reason, which we’ll discuss in another blog, is “bounce rate” which is an important factor in any SEO strategy.
So, by following the steps in this article, and also offering value on the other side of your links, you could start seeing a big improvement in your click-thru rates in no time at all!
For more information on how to improve your marketing strategy or grow your business in 2021, read some of the other awesome posts on the Intentionally Inspirational blog.
Written by Lewis James