Expected Click Through Rate is one of the three components to your Google Ad Quality Score. It is very important to try and get as high as a score as possible in order to reduce your Cost Per Click.
A Quick Reminder About the Importance of Quality Score
Google's Quality Score is directly responsible for the cost to acquire a sale or customer when using Google ads. Your ad goes into an ad auction at the time your keyword is searched on. Your bid amount is multiplied by your Quality Score to generate your Ad Ranking. The highest ranked ads from the auction will be shown to the user.
Quality Score consists of three components: Expected Click Through Rate, Ad Relevance, and Landing Page Experience. Two of the three components are directly related to the ad text copy itself. It is vital that any advertiser spend time optimizing tehir ad copy to score highly in both Expected Click Through Rate and Ad Relevance.
The Difference Between Expected Click Through Rate and Ad Relevance
It can be a bit difficult to understand the nuanced difference between Expected Click Through Rate and Ad Relevance. Ad Relevance is how closely related your ad text is to the keyword being searched on, and Expected CTR is the likelihood of your ad being clicked on if shown to the user.
An exaggerated example would be someone searching for "Red Sneakers" and an ad with the headline "We Don't Sell Red Sneakers" is in the ad auction. It is relevant to the keyword because it is tightly aligned with they keyword searched on, but it will surely have a low CTR because we know that someone searching for that term is likely researching or looking to buy red sneakers.
In more realistic, competitive ad auctions, an example may be the following two headlines for the same "Red Sneakers" search:
Ad 1 Headline: "Red Sneakers in Stock - Ships Free Today"
Ad 2 Headline: "Red Sneakers for Sale"
The first headline should be an obvious winner to anyone looking to buy red sneakers.
At AdOptics, we have found that the inclusion of some key phrases can really drive the Expected Click Through Rate higher. Some examples:
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The above list is just a small sample of the trigger phrases that can make your ad more likely to be clicked on. This is when it is very helpful to put yourself in the shoes of the searcher and understand their intention in their search. What are they trying to accomplish? What are words that will get them closer to accomplishing their goal?
One key phrase that is somewhat grey hat is starting your second headline with "Click Here", as in the example "Click Here to Start Selling Today!". Google may flag your ad in this case, but YMMV.
As with anything, you need to constantly ab test your ad copy to see what users respond to. An automated ad testing tool like AdOptics is a great way to simplify the process.