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Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Definition
Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click a link, ad, email, or search result out of everyone who saw it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions multiplied by 100.
Why it matters
CTR is the fastest signal of whether your message earns attention. In paid search, a higher CTR lowers your cost per click and raises Quality Score. In organic search, CTR reflects how compelling your title and meta description are against competitors on the same SERP. In email, it separates opens from genuine interest. Because it isolates the “did the promise land?” question from everything downstream, CTR is where most B2B teams start when diagnosing a funnel that generates impressions but not pipeline.
How it works
The formula is simple: CTR = (clicks ÷ impressions) × 100. An ad shown 10,000 times that earns 250 clicks has a 2.5% CTR.
Benchmarks vary by channel and intent:
| Channel | Typical B2B CTR |
|---|---|
| Google Search ads | 2–5% |
| Google Display ads | 0.4–0.9% |
| Organic search (position 1) | 25–35% |
| B2B email | 2–4% |
| LinkedIn ads | 0.4–0.8% |
To lift CTR, sharpen the headline against searcher intent, add specificity and numbers, match ad copy to the query, and use structured data or rich snippets to stand out. Watch CTR alongside conversion rate — a high CTR with low conversion usually means the click promise and the landing page disagree. For an audit of where clicks leak in your funnel, see our free audit.
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