Click-Through Rates Ahoy

Click-through rates (AKA CTRs) measure how many people clicked on a link to view a specific page, watch a video, or any other actions that are not directly related to revenue generation. These actions are sometimes referred to as micro-conversions. If you treat views or clicks as your goal, these are often easier to achieve over a larger audience than proper deposits.

Why? Because human beings are curious creatures.

Getting your leads’ attention is not necessarily hard to achieve, but piquing their interest long enough to get them to sign up or pay for a service? You better grab that steering wheel tight. This is the point where you either sink or swim in most cases.

As easy as they are to obtain, their effect is minuscule if they are not developing into deposits at some point in your client journey. In other words, your hard work might not be paying off, and you could be wasting precious time without seeing the desired results.

Conversion Rates mark the Spot

One of the most prominent white whales in the affiliate marketing industry is the highly coveted conversion rates. While they are not as hard to capture as Moby Dick, there is still a more significant challenge in obtaining and maintaining a lucrative performance. Conversions can refer to many different factors such as registrations, subscriptions, etc., but this term usually translates into deposits – specifically, first-time deposits (FTDs).

Given this information, convincing your leads to sign up and make a deposit by themselves (a process often referred to as a selfie) is more challenging as it requires a level of trust. On the other hand, the compensation is usually better, which is why cost per acquisition (CPA) is the most popular payment model in the industry.

In some cases, conversion rates may also refer to second-time or third-time deposits. This is a factor you will need to discuss with the advertisers you are collaborating with when building your performance marketing strategy. These later-stage deposits convey the strength of your leads’ player value.

A Second before You set Sail

Ultimately, you will need to set your short and long-term goals, thus choosing which of these factors you will shift your focus towards. Optimizing your performance marketing strategy to gain higher click-through rates or conversion rates does not have a one-track fit all. Your creatives will need to reflect your goal by encouraging potential clients to create micro-conversions or FTDs.

As stated above, getting your marketing leads simply to click on a specific page or watch a video is not necessarily hard. You need to keep your target audience’s characteristics, wants, and needs in mind and then create a call to action (CTA) that appeals to these identifying aspects.

As we have mentioned before, though conversions are harder to acquire, the reward is also more remarkable when compared to micro-conversions. Unless you have a killer creative that drives both clicks and sales, the first are pretty much useless.

The results should always indicate an improvement in your performance in two ways. First, expanding your target audience by reaching more people and gaining a healthy stream of traffic to your platform. Second, turning that traffic into conversions. A business cannot survive on clicks and views alone unless you are getting paid for those actions.