If you work with a marketing or sales team, you might have dealt with the term clickthrough rate (CTR). Your CTR shows how many people see your company’s posts or ads and click on them.
CTR is a key indicator of how effectively you market your brand over a period of time.
Google Ads sees a high CTR as an indicator that your ads and listings are helpful and relevant to your target audience. This improves your Ad Rank, meaning your ads will often appear closer to the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for relevant search terms.
A low CTR indicates poorly-targeted sales campaigns. It could also indicate that there may be other blockers on your website: unclear calls to action (CTAs), broken code or links, or a confusing layout.
Gamification can help improve your CTR significantly.
A higher CTR will also help you run effective remarketing ad campaigns. This post will show you how gamification can increase your CTR and lead to better remarketing.
- What Is CTR And Why Is It Important?
- What Is A Good CTR For Your Business?
- Industry-Specific Differences In CTR
- 5 Gamification Strategies To Improve Sales Campaign CTR (With Examples)
- The Benefits Of Gamification In Remarketing Campaigns
What Is CTR And Why Is It Important?
The theory behind CTR is straightforward. Your ads, web pages, and emails are shown several times and seen by potential visitors. These are called impressions.
When a potential visitor sees your ad or CTA and decides to find out more, they will click on it.
So, the number of impressions and clicks are counted separately. CTR indicates the percentage of people that see your ads and click through to your landing page. This percentage is worked out by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions multiplied by 100.
The CTR is often used to measure if a marketing campaign is successful. A high CTR shows the marketing team what percentage of the target market is being reached.
You need a certain number of impressions for your CTR to be impactful. From around 100 impressions, you can tell how well your campaigns, ads, or keywords perform by looking at the CTR.
It makes sense that CTR is a crucial metric for measuring the success of your marketing efforts. When more people click on your links, there is a higher probability that they will buy your products or services.
When your ads are well-targeted and have a high CTR, and your website is optimized for conversions, you may not even need a sales rep to get involved.
This means fewer resources, phone calls, and emails are required to convert leads into customers. You will achieve a more effective sales campaign with fewer communication steps and a shorter sales process.
What Is A Good CTR For Your Business?
The quality of your CTR will vary depending on your customers’ region, demographics, devices, and more. For example, a good value for your Google Search Ads significantly differs from a good value for your Display Ads. Your business industry also plays a significant role.
The average CTR across industries is 1.91% for Search Ads and 0.35% for Display Ads, according to HubSpot.
Wordstream benchmarks CTR at 6–7% for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads. These figures refer to Google’s Search Network and Microsoft Advertising.
Facebook advertising shows significantly lower average rates of less than 1%. This could be because Facebook users more often use the platform for personal connection and entertainment than for buying products.
A good CTR value for banner ads is around 2%, although the average is much lower at 0.25%. The CTR for email newsletters should be 10–20% because personalization and behavioral data can be used to target customers more precisely.
Industry-Specific Differences In CTR
Depending on the industry, average CTRs can have various ranges.
For example, according to a Wordstream study from 2021, the average CTR in the Arts & Entertainment sector is 10.67%. In areas like Legal (3.84%) or Education (5.46%), we see much lower CTRs.
The average CTR for the above-listed industries is 6.18%. This is the value for all their digital advertising efforts, including email marketing.
CTR is significantly higher in some industries than in others. This is perhaps because it is easier to reach consumers emotionally with topics from the Arts & Entertainment or Tourism sectors than, for example, for a complex Financial Services product that requires explanation.
Banks and insurance companies face particular challenges in attracting potential customers’ attention and achieving good CTRs.
CTR is an important KPI for the Quality Score of your Google ads. To understand how well your ads, content, or offers are performing, you must look at them in the context of other important metrics, such as conversion rate.
Ultimately, CTR is measured to see how many prospective customers click on your ads and encourage them to buy your products or contact you. Let us look at how gamification has proven to be a successful concept for reaching higher CTRs.
5 Gamification Strategies To Improve Sales Campaign CTR (With Examples)
You now know that CTR is important and that it can be improved. We will look at five ways to increase CTR and open rate using gamification.
5 Gamification Strategies To Improve CTR:
- Online Advent Calendar Promotion
- Swipe Game Concept
- Informational Quiz
- Scratch Card Ads
- Memory Game Marketing Activity
1. Online Advent Calendar Promotion
According to the Wordstream study we looked at earlier in this post, the average CTR in the tourism industry is 8.54%.
Thurgau Tourism saw a high CTR of 13.9%. It increased this metric further by offering its target groups an interactive user experience.
As a sales promotion idea for the peak holiday season, they introduced Brame’s online advent calendar Game Concept and gave away regional prizes.
This promotional campaign worked so well that their CTR increased to 16.2%.
The open rate for Thurgau Tourism’s newsletter emails also notably increased by 12%, thanks to their gamification approach. Their newsletter unsubscribe rate was also reduced by more than 90%.
This Thurgau Tourism sales campaign is also an admirable example of a joint promotion: a regional business offered each day’s prize. This way, Thurgau Tourism could highlight local products and services, and the local businesses could advertise themselves.
2. Swipe Game Concept
Marketing financial services to younger target groups must be approached differently.
Bank EKI faced the challenge of familiarizing younger target groups with the benefits of their new savings plan. This initially proved laborious until the bank started to address its target groups using an interactive gamification approach.
Using a Swipe Game Concept, users could play their Hit or Myth game and swipe through information on the bank’s savings plan. Customers were further motivated by giving them the chance to win a starting credit of CHF 500 while playing.
The result was more than convincing: The bank received positive campaign responses in their regional catchment area and recorded a significant increase in high-quality marketing qualified leads (MQLs).
The brick-and-mortar bank branches also saw more foot traffic as a result.
3. Informational Quiz
Another financial services provider that needed a fresh way to market its products to a younger audience is Bank Cler.
It aimed to provide customers with information and services on the subject of “money in relationships” in an entertaining way. To pique the curiosity of younger target groups, the bank implemented a Quiz game. They did not offer any prizes.
The campaign achieved over 17 million impressions across various media channels.
Compared to their previous campaigns, the CTR increased by 1.03% using gamification concepts, and 68% of users completed the quiz. It was an effective campaign that helped Bank Cler position itself as a specialist on “money in relationships.”
Bank Cler reached their campaign goals by using gamification to enhance the customer journey.
4. Scratch Card Ads
Remarketing aims for personalized customer engagement. Gamification makes non-game contexts more fun and engaging, motivating customers to take certain actions on your site.
The travel app Ouibus needed to increase user retention. Ouibus used Scratch Card ads to retarget users who were already engaged with their app. The performance considerably improved.
The Ouibus team was motivated by this success, so they proceeded with a week-long flash sales campaign. After this week, the company saw a 27% revenue increase. They also witnessed an incremental rise in purchases – up to 15% – during the following months.
5. Memory Game Marketing Activity
SPAR launched a loyalty program called SPAR Friends but did not see a high uptake among loyal customers.
To encourage customers to download the app and join the loyalty program, SPAR utilized a Memory Game Concept to increase awareness of the offering.
Its Memory Game had a simple purpose: Educate SPAR customers on the benefits of becoming a SPAR Friends member in an interactive and engaging way. SPAR offered prizes, and customers had to download the app to claim their rewards.
This marketing activity engaged thousands of customers. The average game completion rate was 93%, encouraging many new membership signups.
The Benefits Of Gamification In Remarketing Campaigns
Today, customers want an engaging experience with your business. That is why you need to offer something out of the box to help potential customers remember your company.
Yet, even if you are running Search and Display ads, it may not be enough to convince a new customer to make a purchase the first time they meet your brand.
You can try various remarketing strategies, but a more creative sales strategy is needed if regular approaches do not work.
Benefits Of Gamification In Remarketing:
Moves Away From Third-Party Data
The internet is on its way to the so-called “cookieless future.” Third-party cookies are small packets of information about your searches and site visits stored in your browser.
Cookies are currently used to provide personalized customer experiences via third-party providers. Due to new legal regulations, it is becoming increasingly difficult for online businesses to obtain customer data.
Companies need to generate high-quality first-party data to continue responding optimally to the needs of their customers. You can achieve this by capturing your target groups’ attention and maximizing CTR.
Before every lead and conversion on your website, there is a click on your ad or search result. Measuring these clicks gives you first-party data to work with.
Gamification helps increase CTRs across industries, thus helping you achieve your business goals.
Markets To Interested Website Visitors
Remarketing has become essential to any advertising campaign. Most people who visit your website for the first time are not ready to buy your product or service. So, even with a high CTR, you may not see any increase in sales (conversions).
While potential customers visiting your site may be genuinely interested in your product or service, many factors could hinder their immediate conversion.
Remarketing campaigns are effective because they enable you to show ads to those visitors who have already expressed an interest in your business offering.
With the help of search engines and social media channels, you can remind them why your product provides the best option to solve their problem. When done well, remarketing campaigns can convince hesitant visitors to buy into your brand.
Leverages Psychology
Reminding potential customers about your product is effective because remarketing is grounded in a natural psychological phenomenon called the “mere exposure effect.”
The mere exposure effect describes how the more we see something, the more we tend to like it.
This explains why viewing an advertisement for a product or service seen previously increases conversions. We believe that adding gamification can deepen consumers’ appreciation for the promoted product and reinforce brand affiliation.
Gamification is 75% psychology and 25% technology, as Gabe Zichermann said in his book Gamification by Design (2011).
Offering discounts and free merchandise for specific actions, such as posting a positive review, makes customers feel valued and increases their loyalty toward your brand.
As a consumer yourself, which brand would you choose: the one that makes you feel special and gives rewards or the one that does not offer any of these? The answer is clear, and it is no surprise that most people would opt for the first brand.
Your Next Move
If you decide to focus on customer remarketing, then engagement is a major factor you need to consider. Gamifying your sales campaign is a key strategy in achieving this.
Whenever people gain a reward, get to the next level, or win a competition, a dopamine rush in the brain motivates them to continue. This is why brands that successfully implement gamification in their remarketing campaigns increase their loyal customer base.
When you approach advertising in this way, customers engage with your brand because they are having fun. They may not actively be thinking about purchasing something at the time. But gamification will cultivate a positive connotation with your brand, aiding the buying process.
If you want to engage your target customers, increase CTR, and make your remarketing effective, contact us to learn more about Brame. Our gamification solutions could be your tools for acquiring new customers.
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