While the importance of clickthrough rates vary by industry, online ad format, and campaign goals, they are a front line metric that can help provide detail into the state of competition and consumer interest.

As people start to engage with advertising, the next progression in the lead generation funnel is conversions, and again the data varies quite a bit by industry.

While looking at CTRs and click-through rates respectively is interesting, how they work together is where the data starts to get useful. For instance, note that Physicians & Surgeons have both a high CTR and a high conversion rate vs. Automotive Repair has an equally impressive conversion rate, however, a much lower CTR.

Let’s look at all of our industries by breaking them out by high/low conversion rate and high/low CTR. For the purpose of this report, a high conversion rate will be considered above 10%, and a high CTR will be considered above 3%.

How much will it cost? That’s what everyone wants to know. The truth of the matter is, focusing solely on upfront cost metrics can be a deceiving way to evaluate your online advertising, it’s your ROI you should be focused on. For instance, you may want to target a high CPC in order to target a higher quality audience online. Subsequently, you also may want to target a low CPC in order to drive volume. The good news is that online advertising can be customized to your needs and goals, but since we love data let’s take a look anyway! What’s fascinating is across these industries, the difference between the lowest CPC and highest CPC is $17.44, more than a 600% increase!

In looking at the industries more in-depth, however, the data starts to make sense. On average, an attorney is willing to pay more for a client than most other industries. What’s interesting though is the difference in CPL between attorneys and physicians and surgeons, they’re getting leads at a much lower cost per lead in a high customer value industry.

As we move from cost per click to cost per lead, things get even more compelling. The range of cost per quality range is $16 for physicians and surgeons all the way up to $143 for financial services, more than a 750% increase! Given the difference in customer value per industry, it’s understandable there will be wide swings in cost per lead averages. In addition, campaign goals vary as some target a high volume of leads or awareness, while others target high quality leads (further down the funnel).

Just as we saw in the average conversion rate vs. CTR section earlier in this report, the relationship between CPC and Cost Per Quality Lead by industry varies considerably.

Let’s again look at all of our industries by breaking them out by high/low CPC and high/low Cost Per Quality Lead. For the purpose of this report, a high CPC will be considered above $5, and a high Cost Per Quality Lead will be considered above $70.

The last part of our report is one of the most fascinating as we look at the percentage of leads by industry that are phone calls vs. online conversions such as form fills. At the beginning of the report we stated that the overall lead distribution average is 85% phone based vs. 15% online, but let’s look at it by industry!

With the exception of Automotive – For Sale, Personal Services, and Travel, the majority of industries are fairly heavily in favor of phone based leads. The advantage of phone based leads is a direct connection to your customer, interacting with a real person, and the convenience of being able to instantly fulfil their needs. All considerable advantages vs. going through online conversion funnels whether that’s chat, forms, email, booking…etc. For businesses that aren’t equipped to handle the phone volume or just don’t want it, utilizing tactics including online chat, forms, scheduling, and email become necessary.