Everyone who follows my blog regularly knows about my totally normal and healthy obsession with unicorns. I’m the original Unicornaholic, after all! And you should be obsessed with unicorns too! Way too many marketers settle for average performers when there are magical unicorns out there just waiting to be found. Unicorns that can boost your profits and cut your costs! But unicorns aren’t my only passion. I’m also passionate about improving click-through rates.

It’s no secret that CTR is crucial for PPC marketing. A higher CTR results in a higher Quality Score, which in turn lowers your CPC and boosts your ad rank. But its impact goes far beyond that. An impressive CTR is not only the most critical factor in AdWords, but it also holds immense importance across other marketing channels, including organic search, CRO, social media, and email marketing. Let’s dive into five surprising benefits of achieving a remarkable, unicorn-worthy CTR across all your marketing channels.

1. Significantly Higher Ad Impression Share

A high CTR translates to substantial savings due to a lower cost per click, an advantage that really compounds over time. This holds true not only for standard search ads, but across all Google platforms, from the Google Display Network to Gmail Ads. However, the benefits of a remarkable CTR extend beyond just impacting CPC. It also influences your impression share – how frequently your ads are displayed in the first place. Within the Google Search Network, each increase (or decrease) of 1 point in Quality Score can significantly impact your impression share:

By increasing your Quality Score by a single point, your average impression share on desktop can increase by approximately 6 percent. This effect is even more pronounced on mobile devices, where competition for impression share is twice as fierce.

A one-point increase in Quality Score can result in an average impression share increase of 12 percent on mobile! Data sources: Impression share data is based on an analysis of approximately 10,000 small and medium-size accounts (spending between $10,000 and $15,000 per month), based worldwide, advertising on the Search network in Q1 and Q2 of 2015.

2. Improved Organic Search Rankings

We recently conducted research to investigate whether exceeding typical user engagement metrics leads to improved organic rankings. The results revealed a clear pattern:

• The more your web pages surpass the expected organic CTR for a particular position, the higher they are likely to rank in organic search results. For example, moving up one spot in Google’s SERP (e.g., from Position 5 to Position 4) requires a 3 percent increase in your organic CTR. Achieving another position jump (e.g., from Position 4 to Position 3) necessitates another 3 percent CTR increase.
• Conversely, if your pages fall short of the expected organic search CTR, they will likely appear lower in organic SERP positions. Essentially, failing to beat the expected click-through rate for a given position makes it unlikely for your page to rank among the top 5 results. You naturally want your pages to attract as many organic search clicks as possible. Higher click counts mean more traffic to your site, signaling to Google that your page is the most relevant and valuable resource for users. Our research also uncovered that the weight given to click-through rate within Google’s organic search ranking algorithms has been steadily increasing throughout this year.

Over the past five months, I tracked a group of 1,000 keywords and URLs. This data showed that Google’s algorithm is increasingly prioritizing higher CTRs for pages to achieve top-4 organic ranking status. This trend aligns with the expected behavior of a machine learning-based algorithm that reorders search results based on CTR. By prioritizing pages with higher CTRs, the algorithm ensures that users find what they’re looking for more quickly, reducing the need to scroll through lower SERP results.

3. Higher Conversion Rates

Increasing your click-through rate has a direct impact on your conversion rates. Doubling your CTR can lead to a 50 percent increase in your conversion rate. This is precisely why I consider click-through rate to be the most crucial conversion metric. Take a look at this data from one of our large client accounts as an example:

This is just one instance, but we’ve observed this same conversion curve across numerous accounts. (Combining multiple accounts into a single graph is challenging due to variations in conversion rates across different industries and offers.) This trend illustrates that capturing someone’s interest enough to click through to your website (whether through email, ads, organic search listings, etc.) generates momentum that carries over to sign-ups and purchases.

4. Complimentary Clicks From Social Media Ads

Facebook and Twitter might not officially call it Quality Score, opting for terms like Relevance Score (Facebook) and Quality Adjusted Bid (Twitter). Regardless of the terminology, the principle remains the same: a higher score translates to a larger ad impression share for the same budget, all at a lower cost per engagement. As demonstrated below, a high engagement rate enhances your ads’ visibility and cost-effectiveness:

As the engagement rate of your promoted post on Twitter Ads increases, the cost per engagement significantly decreases. One unexpected benefit of high engagement on Facebook and Twitter is the potential for free clicks. Here’s how: On Facebook, if someone shares your boosted post, it will appear in their connections’ news feeds, generating additional engagements without any cost to you. Similarly, on Twitter, when a follower retweets or shares your Promoted Tweet, you gain additional organic impressions without incurring any charges.

5. Increased Email Visibility

Let’s shift our focus to email marketing. How many emails land in your inbox daily? Dozens? Hundreds? Consistently engaging with emails from brands and businesses ensures that their future messages reach your primary inbox. Conversely, ignoring emails may result in them being relegated to Outlook’s Clutter folder, Gmail’s Promotions tab, or worse, the dreaded Spam folder.

Consider this:

Microsoft Outlook’s clutter filter frequently flags emails I’ve subscribed to – even internal emails from my own company! These emails are being filtered out by a machine learning algorithm. What implications does this have for your business? Emails with higher CTRs (or more accurately, higher open rates) have a greater chance of being seen, opened, and clicked on. On the other hand, emails with dismal click-through rates risk being banished to the depths of the “clutter dungeon.” One effective strategy we implemented was removing unresponsive subscribers from our email lists. There’s little value in clinging to years of accumulated email addresses, especially if those individuals have never engaged with your content. Do you realistically believe that someone who has been inactive for years will suddenly convert into a paying customer? Deleting half of your database can instantly double your CTR. Email providers will take notice of the increased engagement, making it less likely for your future emails to be flagged as clutter.

The Power of CTR

There’s a reason why I prioritize click-through rate above other metrics. Increasing your CTR offers a multitude of benefits, including:

• Increased ad impressions
• Improved organic search engine rankings
• Higher conversion rates
• Free clicks through social media ads
• Greater visibility and engagement with your emails Start optimizing your CTR today and unlock its full potential. Make it remarkable!