Clickbait has been around ever since social media became a thing. Every business wanted to siphon people from social media onto their website, and the most attention-grabbing, shocking, and sensational headlines were their best weapon. People have grown to resent clickbait, but it is not all bad. If a clickbait title leads to useful content, people do not mind how they got to the content. However, clickbait that points to thin or fluff content is dangerous. Even though there are both sides to this argument, we will be focusing on why businesses should avoid clickbait whenever they can.

It Attracts The Wrong Types of Visitors

Brand loyalty is extremely important when growing a brand. Businesses need people who will visit their website, like their content, and are likely to come back when they post additional content. Clickbait does not do this.

It allows the business to reach as many people as possible, but many of them will not stick around or come back because they just visited the website out of curiosity.

This can hurt the business because collecting the metrics that matter on who their customers are becomes very challenging, and the increased bounce rate hurts SEO.

You Will Disappoint Your Audience

Clickbait rarely lives up to the audience’s expectations. Once you start disappointing your audience like this, they stop trusting your content and ultimately your brand. They would rather not visit your website than be gassed up and then let down when they reach the end of your content.

This is the primary reason most news publications and businesses have moved on from the sensational headlines generally classified as clickbait.

You Can Lose Potential Customers

Continuing from the point above, digital marketing goes hand in hand with a great user experience once people land on your website. If people are consistently getting disappointed once they reach your website, that impacts user experience and satisfaction.

These people are much more likely to leave without converting. While there is the potential loss of customers to think about, the most worrying aspect is the loss of revenue associated with it.

It Hurts Your Partnerships and Monetization Potential

The point of digital marketing is to bring as many people as possible to your website and convert them into paying customers, subscribers, or the like. Nothing says you cannot monetize this traffic, and one of the best ways to do so is through ads.

If you are selling some space for an ad to an agency, they will ask how many visitors you get in a day. They might be impressed by the tens of thousands you list, but when they dig further, they will be disappointed by the other metrics.

Metrics like how long people spend on your website, where they live, or their demographics get muddled when the primary source of traffic is clickbait.

Your business might end up losing much more than it gains from the high visitor numbers associated with clickbait.

Clickbait is not necessarily a bad thing because, when used right, it can produce great results for a business. However, it is best to avoid it as much as possible because people now know about it and despise it, and using it has more downsides than upsides.