Are you frustrated with "Click Through" advertising?

Are you paying money for people to blink in front of your product? 

I'd like to post an analogy and an example to generate some conversation around this topic.

"A bottle of snake oil you bought  is not going to necessarily cure your acne on it's own...there is no magic potion in snake oil that works on your problem. It's just liquefied snake. But washing you skin each day (with a little snake oil mixed with soap and water) will keep your skin clean and therefore reduce the intensity of your acne problem....  So indirectly it works... so you buy it feeling satisfied."  

Is Click Through advertising... your oil?

First let me look at everyones obsession with CTR (Click Through Ratio):

What's good, what's the norm?  0.02%-0.05%,  0.10%-0.25% or 1%

My take: Who cares about comparing CTR to industry averages as the real aim is to convince traffic to engage you in a transaction.

I could probably get a 2% CTR if I promised a an unbelievably amazing "free" thrill.  Will visitors pay money for that thrill? Will they even leave me their email address for it?  Could I monetize on the traffic? Probably not.

Second:

Misleading advertising to attract click throughs: misleading ads create false hope for both the merchant and the client. 

I used to set up brew your own breweries/wineries in Canada where liquor of any type is heavily taxed.  

The owners of these shops would naively think that posting a "1/2 price beer/wine" sign on the street would attract qualified new customers.  It drew in some interest from walkers-by that thought "who's this crazy?" The traffic seldom converted. Can you guess why?

Because the ad misled the public into thinking they could immediately purchase a bottle of wine or a 6-pack of beer for 1/2 price.  They discovered quickly that they needed to brew 7 cases of beer or 2 cases of wine and wait 3-6 weeks to pick it up. They felt duped and they never came back. Trust was eroded. 

The real objective is a quality transaction that can somehow be monetized, either immediately or some time in the future:

At the end of the day, If you can sell 10 products a day for $100 each at 50% margin, with a budget of $2.50 a day for 10,000 impressions on Face-Book, then you might not be doing so bad. That's how you need to look at it.  0.01% for one person might be great... while another may need 0.2% to break even.

Then there is the idea of list building to leverage audience networks.  Pay to get subscribers, then leverage the list... How do we attach a price tag to that?

What's your feeling on "conversion"  let us all know.

http://AskAWebStrategist.com/

Further Research:

I Interviewed the author of Google AdWords for Dummies, Howie Jacobson PhD last month about Google AdWords... Have a look: http://netcastevent.com/component/rsevents/event/64