30 Ad Strategies to Increase CTR

Regardless of the traffic type, the creative is still the first element a potential customer interacts with. The success of an advertising campaign depends on its attractiveness. Are there any general rules that can increase the CTR of your creative? Let’s talk about how to increase CTR and get the most out of your creative on the RichAds platform.

Three traffic types are available on the platform: push notifications, pops, and native ads. This post will discuss common points that affect CTR and talk about the nuances of preparing creatives for push notifications and native ads. Ideas can be used for other types of advertising, given their characteristics.

General tips on how to increase the CTR of your advertisement

Of course, creative itself directly affects the success of the entire enterprise. But equally important what settings you enable while launching it. Even the amount of your creatives affects your CTR.

First, let’s discuss not the creatives themselves, but the conditions that affect your creative getting high performance.

Ad strategy №1. How to boost CTR with the number of creatives or how many creatives are enough for success?

On the one hand, it seems that for a quick test, you can add 1creative. Just test the source and go further if it didn’t work. Unfortunately, the practice of quick decisions in this case does not give positive results.

No matter how hard you try to put yourself in the shoes of a potential client, without a test, it is impossible to understand which creative will be successful. 

If you run a campaign with 1 or 2 creatives, it may turn out that these are the very options that will not catch your audience. But you won’t even know about it, thinking that the offer doesn’t work on this source.

Our experts have already seen a situation when a client launches 5 creatives, and conversions come from only one of them.

For a quality test of the traffic source, launch with at least 3-5 creatives. It will help to improve CTR at list for one of them. Don’t be confused by the idea that creatives will compete with each other. In this case, the competition only benefits you.

The network’s internal statistics say that the number of creatives and a campaign’s success are variables depending on each other. A campaign launched with 1 or 2 creatives is less likely to be successful than a campaign with 5 and more creatives options.

Focus on tests. Start with at least 3-5 creatives. This will increase your chances of finding the most successful creative.

Ad strategy №2. When to launch ads to increase CTR?

Human behavior can be predicted, especially when it comes to major events or holidays. These days people spend much more than usual. For a marketer, this means only one thing: give people a reason, and they’ll spend.

In 2019, US online trading profits during Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday broke all previous records. It’s foolish not to try to skim the cream off these and other events in 2020. Boost your CTR using holidays!

Use major holidays, big sales days, release dates for new phone models, sports finals, and even the final season of a popular TV series (if there is, of course, a worthy substitute for “Game of Thrones”).

Which settings can help to increase CTR?

Ad strategy №3. Apply impressions limit to boost CTR

If you think that showing your ads to customers as often as possible is a good strategy, then you just feel. In this matter, you need to follow the principle of the golden mean.

People react to everything new with great interest. Multiple impressions of the same ad lead to the opposite effect — they stop being noticed. At worst, somebody will turn it off due to intrusiveness.

This is particularly evident in push advertising. Imagine how unnatural it looks if you are written 5 times a day that you won an iPhone, or the same girl sends a private message.

In order not to see the record low CTR, you should set reasonable ad limits. RichAds statistics say that campaigns with 1-2 impressions per day show the best results. The higher the score, the lower the success of the campaign.

Limit the impressions of your ads to 1-2 impressions per day. For a unique audience, set up 1 impression per 3-5 or 7 days.

Ad strategy №4.  How to improve CTR increasing bid

A low bid damages the CTR at the very start. The bidding principle is ruthless, the lower your bid, the worse the sources you get.

Your creative may be awesome, but with a low bid, the chances of success are low. You can get a low CTR due to the sources and be completely excluded from the bidding.

In RichAds, you can see the average CPC and the recommended bid size after selecting the country in the campaign settings. This information is constantly updated so that you can launch your campaign with the most relevant bid.

Follow the size of the current recommended bid in the campaign settings. They are constantly updated to ensure you enter the bidding with the current bid.

What is RichAds?
🔝 Push and pop ads,
🔼 CPC starts from $ 0.003,
🔝 CPM from $0,3 in Tier 3, $0,5 in Tier 2, $1 in Tier 1,
⏫ large volumes of available traffic in more than 200 geos.

Ad strategy №5. Change your creatives in time

A burnt-out creative does not convert. This is especially important for push notifications. We’ve already mentioned how people get bored with the same type of ads.

If you’ve found a successful creative, slightly change its appearance so that users don’t get bored with it. So the opportunity to get a click from the user is much higher.

Try replacing your creatives once a week or more. This effort will pay off.

Which creatives to use to increase CTR?

Ad strategy №6. Don’t use creatives that others have already used

If they work for others, then they will work for me. But everything is not so simple. When it comes to advertising campaigns that promote brand awareness, yes. The more such advertising, the better for the brand.

But in affiliate marketing, it’s a little different. If you look for a successful creative in a spy tool in one network and launch the same option, you may face a problem. You probably won’t be the only person who has done the same. In the end, you launch a campaign with the same creatives to the same sources and often to the same audience.

Spy or not? Of course, yes. Lots of services were launched for it, for example, AdPlexity. But do it wisely.

If you find a successful creative, copy the idea. Look for a similar picture. Use spy tools for inspiration. This is more beneficial than 100% copying.

How to get the most out of spy services? Read secrets from AdPlexity.

Ad strategy №7. Make the banner clear at first sight to boost CTR

The user will have no more than 1-2 seconds to notice and evaluate whether your ad is attractive. There is no time to explain: everything should be clear at a glance. 

Do you want to boost creative’s CTR? Place 1 (maximum 2) large objects on a creative. Many small details on a little banner create chaos. The user needs to concentrate on understanding. Large simple illustrations are what you need. Compare.

What is the girl in the left photo advertising? Hair products? A hairdresser? Gifts? Shopping? Bonus card? At first glance, it isn’t easy to understand what this picture says. Let’s look at the second one. Yes, it was a sale!

We want you to be successful! So we give you access to our RichAds Icons Pack. Use these bright eye-catching icons for free to attract user’s attention and improve CTR of your campaigns.

Ad strategy №8. Choose a quality photo

How to improve CTR using the right photos? We do not recommend using too glossy stock photos. They look fake and rarely attract customers. Users believe photos that look like ordinary ones.

For push ads traffic, the perfect picture will always be as close to life as possible. It looks like it was filmed on the phone, with ordinary people that can be seen on the street. No models, everything is as simple and natural as possible.

For native ads, choose higher quality photos, but stick to naturalness. Stock photos with boring models rarely convert well.

Ad strategy №9. Work on the text

Both push notifications, and native ads differ by a small amount of text on the creative. At the same time, the ad copy should be not only clear but also catchy.

Remember the classic AIDA rule when you think of a title.

A = Attention 
I = Interest 
D = Desire 
A = Action 

Your short text should contain not just information, but something that will generate interest and desire, and the desire should be strong enough to take action.

And most important: don’t forget to use calls to action (open, check, take) to improve CTR. The user should clearly understand what kind of action you expect from him.

Tips on how to increase CTR of push ads

Push notifications are very similar to messages from instant messengers. Use the advantages that instant messengers have to get a high CTR.

• Ad strategy №10. For desktop push notifications, use photos for main images and illustrations for icons. The photo will draw attention, and the icon will quickly make it clear what your offer is about.

• Ad strategy №11. Icons play a leading role in mobile push notifications.
  Illustrations show the best results for icons of Nutra vertical, Sweepstakes. For Dating, Gambling, Betting, use photos for icons.
  But the test, of course, will not be superfluous.

Icons for push notifications: how to choose and where to download.

• Ad strategy №12. Always use the simplest pictures possible.
  The icon is tiny. There should not be more than one simple large object on it. The same goes for the main picture.

• Ad strategy №13. Illustrations with women attract users more than images with men. It’s a paradox, but it works if your target audience is men and if women.

• Ad strategy №14. For the icon, use the logo of the messenger that is popular in a particular country.
  Moderation rules allow you to use them. The more a push notification looks like a private message, the higher the CTR. To do this, add to the icon a small red circle with the figure “1”. This is one of the best ways to increase CTR.

• Ad strategy №15. Add personalization.
  This can be done using geolocation macros or by mentioning the user’s assumed IP address in push notifications. 
  For example, “Are you from Moscow? Let’s get acquainted!” or “Is this your IP address? You seem to have won something!”

• Ad strategy №16. Emojis can increase CTR, but they don’t always work.
  When push notifications first appeared, emojis performed very well for increasing CTR. Now the situation has changed a bit, so test different options.
  The main rule, don’t use too many emojis at once – it’s as off-putting as a person who writes in caps.

• Ad strategy №17. TikTok is a new trend.
  People can swipe these simple videos for hours. How to use this to push notification’s CTR? Add the app logo to the main picture. It will make people think that there is a video inside. There will be more clicks.
  The main thing is to correctly choose a picture so that the user wants to see what will happen to the character.

• Ad strategy №18. Mention the personal attachment in the push notification. “Watch the video review of the new iPhone inside,” and “Anna sent you 2 new photos”.

• Ad strategy №19. Add important facts over the picture.
  Sometimes a push header is not enough to post all the useful information. In this case, particular facts and figures can be placed on the main picture. For example: “20 free spins”, “10 gifts available”. 
  The main thing is that the information is easy to read and does not interfere with the picture’s perception. And do not overdo it. The size of the image is still minimal.

• Ad strategy №20. Convince with numbers.
  Figures are always facts. Use them to attract and interest the user. However, we do not recommend using percentages. People perceive information better in units.
  For example, instead of “95% of people recommend our company,” use “95 people out of 100 recommend our company”.

• Ad strategy №21. Specify the chance of winning if it’s relevant to your offer. For example, “8 out of 10 people won today”.

• Ad strategy №22. Include a new audience (New Subscribers only).
  These are people who subscribed to push notifications no later than 7 days ago.
  For push ads, novelty plays a vital role in high CTRs. Copy your primary campaign and run it to New subscribers only. See how the CTR values ​​can change.

Tips on how to increase CTR of native ads

The peculiarity of native advertising is in its position within the page and how it fits into the page’s context on which it is located.

• Ad strategy №23. Choose photos that will make the user stick around your ad.The days of shock content are over. Strive to make the image pleasant and exciting to look at.

• Ad strategy №24.The color of the picture matters.
  At first glance, it seems that color is the last thing to think about increasing CTR. However, psychologists have been studying the effect of colors for a long time and have concluded that color is essential.
  Green — for Nutra, yellow — for Sweepstakes, red — for Gambling.

• Ad strategy №25. The numbers work to increase CTR not only for push notifications. This is a common trend that you can try with native ads as well. Remember that numbers build confidence.

• Ad strategy №26. In the text, focus on the positive. It attracts people more.
  Success stories still work. The principle can also be used for headlines: focus on achievements.
  For example: not “I couldn’t lose weight for three years …”, but “After 3 years of trying, I lost 30 kg.”

• Ad strategy №27. Specify the deadline for the deal.
  “Offer is valid only for 2 days” or “Today is the last day of the promotion.” It will heat interest in your offer and improve CTR.

• Ad strategy №28. Don’t overdo with calls to action (CTAs).
  Of course, it is important to use verbs to understand what action you expect from the user. However, don’t use too many of them. This can lead to confusion and ultimately not lead to action.
  
  Conclusion: use 1 CTA button and 1 call to action verb. Preferably place it at the end of the text.

• Ad strategy №29. Use questions in headlines.
  Especially if he can hurt the potential client’s pain points and the answer to the question is “Yes!”. “Can one remedy make you look younger?” Remember about AIDA when writing headlines.

• Ad strategy №30. Show the problem and hint at a solution.
  “Little problem that cost him a month’s revenue…”

Of course, a high CTR is not always equal to a high ROI, but these are one of the main parameters that affect an advertising campaign’s success. 

Now you know how to boost CTR. Therefore, it is foolish not to use the simple advice that you received. But remember that the test will always be at the head of the whole process. Test and get profit with our tips.

What is RichAds?
🔝 Push and pop ads,
🔼 CPC starts from $ 0.003,
🔝 CPM from $0,3 in Tier 3, $0,5 in Tier 2, $1 in Tier 1,
⏫ large volumes of available traffic in more than 200 geos.