Even though a lot of us don’t think this way, the truth is, more traffic isn't always better!
We have all been there. You launch a new campaign, and the initial numbers look great. You are getting a lot of clicks, your cost-per-click (CPC) is low, and everything is going fine. Then, after a while, you get your sales report, and it looks awful.
Conversions are flat, leads are bad, and the bounce rate is sky high. Your initial enthusiasm wears off, and you realize that you didn't attract customers. You attracted window shoppers who had no intention of making a purchase.
That's how most people's experience with a drop in traffic quality looks. It's one of the worst and most frustrating problems in performance marketing because it's often hard to diagnose and fix. Luckily, we have experienced this issue a lot of times, and we have found some ways to tackle this. So in this article, we will try and help you solve this issue on your own and improve along the way!
What Is Traffic Quality?
First of all, just to say, quality is not the quantity of people you bring in. It's their intent!
High-quality traffic comes from users who align with your business goals. That might be a click, a conversion, or anything else. So this means that those people are not just clicking your ad out of curiosity or boredom. They are clicking on it because they want to engage with it.
Low-quality traffic is the opposite. These are users who are a poor fit with your offer. While they might be vaguely interested, they have no intent to actually buy something you offer, as you didn’t make your product or service look like a viable solution to one of their problems. They also might be bots, accidental clickers, or people who got tricked into clicking on your ad.
How can you measure this? Well, you need to look past top-of-funnel metrics like clicks and impressions and focus on what happens after the click:
- Conversion Rate (CR)
This is the most obvious one. What percentage of your visitors take a desired action? It's super simple to read, and it gives you a straight-up answer. Sadly, it doesn't tell the entire story, so you need to combine it with others!
- Bounce Rate
This is the percentage of users who land on your LP and leave without interacting. A high bounce rate usually means that you found the wrong audience or you have misleading ads.
- Average time on Page
These are the people actually spending time on your page. Here you can see if they are reading it as intended or if they leave after five seconds. This can be improved by making the page funnel interesting and engaging.
- Lead-to-Customer Rate
For lead gen, how many of those “leads” actually become paying customers?
- Average Order Value (AOV) & Lifetime Value (LVT)
High-quality traffic often leads to better customers who spend more. Usually, those people don't just spend once, but multiple times over a long term. These are the people you should be focusing on.
Why All of This Matters?
Competition has been intense in the last few years. There are so many skilled marketers competing that you really need to put your best foot forward if you want to have a chance at success. Focusing on traffic quality is something you can do to improve your results and compete better!
It Directly Impacts Your ROI
Every dollar you spend on traffic that doesn’t convert is a dollar wasted. Doubling your traffic with low-quality users just means you are spending twice as much for the same results.
Good traffic can help you get even better results with less spending. This increases your return on ad spend (ROAS) dramatically.
It Protects Your Data Integrity
Bad traffic can often make your data less useful and hide the really important info that you should focus on. It skews conversion data, messes with audience profiles, and leads to bad decisions.
In practical terms, this means that you might scale a “winner” just to find out the real results from the ad are horrible, and you just wasted a lot of money on nothing.
It Helps With Retargeting
Your retargeting audience is only as good as the people you base it on. If you fill your pool of users with people who have no interest in your product, then your retargeting campaigns will be a complete disaster.
Diagnosing and Fixing the Issues
Ok, so now let's get to the fun part, actually finding and fixing what's wrong! Here are the most common issues you will face.
-
Bad Targeting
This is the most frequent issue. It simply means you are showing your ads to the wrong people. This might be an issue with how you set up things, or the platform itself adjusting its algorithm to find the cheapest clicks.
The problem often shows up as a high click-through rate (CTR) but with a very low conversion rate (CR). In other cases, you might also be getting clicks from demographics or locations that don’t match your ideal customer.
The second one is a bit harder to fix, especially if you run special ad categories like financial stuff that limit targeting and leave it up to the platform itself.
Some of the potential fixes are:
- Refine your audience
Instead of going broad, try going specific. You can layer interests, behaviors, ages, genders, locations, and other options on top of each other to get the best results.
- Use negative keywords
On search platforms, keywords are one of your most powerful weapons. Let’s say you are selling luxury designer leather bags. Excluding terms like “cheap”, “free”, or “vegan” can be helpful. Just find what fits your campaigns!
- Check your lookalike/similar audience percentages.
A 1% lookalike audience is highly specific, while a 10% one is extremely broad. If your quality has dropped, it might not be a bad idea to lower your percentages to improve results!
-
Ad and Landing Page Mismatch
Sometimes your ads and LPs don’t match as well as you though. By optimizing ads to be better, capture more attention, and be more effective, they might enter clickbait territory that overpromises and underdelivers, especially once people see the LP.
An extremely high CTR and bounce rate could show that this is your issue. A very low time on page can also show that this might be your main issue.
If this is your problem, you can try doing this:
- Check your Ads
The messaging, imagery, and vibe of your ad should flow seamlessly into your landing page. If you promise 50% off sales on your ad and the visitors are not presented with that offer right away on the LP, they will feel tricked.
- Match your headlines
The headline of your ad should be nearly identical to the headline of your landing page. This simple matching can reassure the user that they are in the right place and reduce bounce rates.
- Be more honest
Don’t promise anything you can't fully deliver on. If you promise a free tool, don't make it a free limited trial. Make your promises clear and honest, the people that you will get that way will be ones with high intent.
-
Bad Audience Pool
Not all traffic sources are made equal. Some ad networks and publishers are notorious for having a lot of bot traffic, click fraud, and low engagement placements like mobile game banners.
It’s relatively straightforward to find these. You will notice a sharp decline in performance from specific traffic sources or campaigns, and you will get random clicks from weird locations or a lot of clicks from a single IP address.
- Placements Reports
Check the placements reports you get from your network. Find and exclude low-quality websites, apps, or other placements that don’t fit your brand.
- Click Fraud Detection Tools
There are a lot of services that can help find and block fraud and bot traffic before it wastes your budget. Make sure you always use something.
- Be Skeptical of “Cheap Traffic”
If a network promises you thousands of clicks for pennies, something is likely off. Quality costs money, and there are no cheap but great options.
-
Technical Issues
Sometimes, even if you have good traffic and intent, something is just not working. That could be a technical glitch, like a website being down. These issues are common but easily solvable and detectable. Check for high traffic, but a massive drop in clicks and conversions of a sudden. It could be at a specific time of day or even part of the funnel.
You should perform Page Speed tests to see if your pages are loading slowly. Every second of delay increases bounce rates! You can also go through the entire conversion process yourself on desktop and mobile to find any buttons or links that are broken. Don’t assume, test!
Conclusion
Traffic quality is something that every marketer should be familiar with. It’s the thing that can boost or ruin your ROI! It can also be a clear signal that some core part of your strategy is broken.
Like any problem, you need to find the root cause and fix it. Luckily, the most common issues are relatively easy to detect, and with our guide, you should be able to find most of them fast. Focus not only on the amount of clicks, but also on their quality, and you should see improvement right away!
Please log in to Facebook to access the comments section