Strong Google Ad Click Through Rates (CTR) are vital to your advertising strategy. Better click through rates mean more clicks which are more chances for you to make a sale. You can dramatically improve your ad CTR with optimized Call To Action (CTA) elements in your ads.
High Click Through Rates = Lower Cost
Higher Click Through Rates not only have the benefit of more chances to sell to a customer, but they also provide lower ad costs. When Google tracks an ad that generates more clicks than other ads being shown, your Expected Click Through Rate Quality Score ranking factor improves from Average (or Below Average) to Above Average. An Above Average Expected Click Through Rate increases your Quality Score. The Quality Score acts as a multiplier for your ad rank in the ad auction process. If you have a QS of 5 and you bid $1, then your ranking is 5. If you have a QS of $10 and a bid of $1, then your ranking score is 10, meaning your ad will have a much better chance of being shown and you will pay less for each click. In this example, a bid of just $0.51 will be enough to win over a competing bid of $1 due to a much higher Quality Score. It is for that reason that focusing on your Call To Actions in your ad text is important.
What Are Call to Actions?
In your ad, you provide a summary of your service or product offering. You also need to provide a reference to the action that the user is looking to complete. Here are some examples of CTAs that are useful in ads:
- Sign Up
- Start Now
- Buy Now
- Get Started
- Speak to Us
- Contact Us
- Try for Free
- Learn More
- Read Now
- Join
- Free (anything)
- Try
- Continue
- Discover
- Click Here to
...
Where to Place Your Call To Action (CTA) in Google Ads
Google Expanded Text Ads and Responsive Ads give you a few places where you can insert CTAs. The pest locations are Headline 2, Description 2, and display URLs.
Using "Get Started" in Headline 2 could be used as: "Get Started Testing Today!". In Headline 2, a good usage we have found is: "Get Started Testing Your Google Ads Account Today." Actually, we are using a very powerful term, "click here" as well. This is a bit of a confusing topic in regards to Google's ad writing rules, so be careful with using it: " Click Here to Get Started Testing Your Google Ads Account Today."
Use the Display URL for a Boost to Your Click Through Rate with CTAs.
Finally, we have seen a very positive result of putting call to actions in the display URLs, normally Display 1. Using "get started" or "sign up" are the two best performing. They need to be lower-case and hyphenated for the best usage, so your get started would be applied as "get-started". Users are getting good at quickly recognizing URL action parameters, so the display URL is one that should not be overlooked.
Test Different CTA for Best Results
It goes without saying that there is no blanket term that will work for all businesses or segments. You constantly need to be testing Call to Action text option. Sign Up vs. Get Started is one that should always be tested. Using an automated ad testing platform like AdOptics is one way to quickly iterate through all of the CTA options while quickly being able to determine a winning CTA.