A strong Google Ads campaign can be paramount to a successful and diverse marketing plan but it can sometimes be difficult to know what metrics you should be aiming for. We’ll break down the industry benchmarks for all the different metrics on Google Ads in 2018 to help you shape your marketing plan in 2019.
Before getting into the numbers, it’s important to know what the different metrics are and what they mean for your campaign.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): your CTR is the percent of the people who have seen your ad and clicked on it.
- Cost Per Click (CPC): your CPC is the final amount that you are charged per click on your ad. This number is found by dividing the total amount of dollars spent by the number of clicks you received.
- Conversion Rate (CVR): the CVR of an ad is the percentage of clicks that resulted in a conversion within the same time period.
- Cost Per Action (CPA): an ad’s CPA is how much it costs to turn an interaction into a conversion. To find this, take the total cost of the ad divided by the number of conversions.
Now that we have the lingo down, let’s get into the numbers! Starting with the CTR benchmarks, industries that see the best results in this category are ones that can elicit an emotional response from consumers such as travel (4.68%), advocacy (4.41%), and dating or personal services (6%). Industries struggling in this area are B2B (2.41%) and Technology (2%). These industries typically have more information driven copy, which does not draw in the casual user.
Tying into the fact that casual users are not searching for things such as Legal Services or Technology, their CPC is much higher than the average. The Legal industry sits at an average of $6 for CPC since those audiences are highly motivated to click through. On the other end of the spectrum E-commerce is the cheapest for CPC at $1.16, which is right around average for Google Ads as a whole.
Dating and Personal Services are number one for CVR. Seeing as this industry had the biggest spike in CTR in 2018, that makes sense. However, the Auto industry is not far behind with a 6% CVR. Buyers are motivated to learn more once they have been targeted in this industry. Advocacy does not see a high CVR through Google Ads at just shy of 2% under the overall average of 3.75%.
Finally, some interesting things to note in the CPA category is that the Auto industry had the lowest CPA, meaning that they didn’t have to spend much money to get their conversions. The Technology industry sits highest with their CPA and while their buyers are driven, the market can be saturated making these conversions expensive.
Goals and metrics are different for every industry and campaign. Make sure that you are targeting the right groups and budgeting efficiently for your next Google Ad Campaign.
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