James Moore

James Moore, CRO, Simpli.fi

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In the absence of real conversion data, small businesses tend to use click-thru rate (CTR) as their metric of choice. But often, CTR doesn’t correlate to the actions small businesses are really interested in driving, such as in-person visits or online purchases. Measuring how many people clicked an ad tells you very little about how well those ads are driving meaningful customer action. Small business’s addiction to clicks is rooted in search engine marketing (SEM)—the gateway to digital marketing for many small businesses. But CTR is not the right metric for other digital advertising tactics, like mobile, social, display or video. The truth is, very few people click on ads relative to the thousands or millions of ad units delivered. When small businesses optimize their campaigns based on CTR, they are optimizing to a small subset of “natural born clickers”—digital outliers who click on ads A LOT—rather than serving more impressions to the people most likely to make a purchase. In this byline, James Moore, CRO of Simpli.fi, will teach small businesses why they need to kick their click addiction. He will then give insights into how to measure actual conversions and optimize campaigns accordingly; that way small businesses can get more from every ad dollar they spend.