Having an effective call to action is important in any marketing campaign. Without a call to action, potential visitors to your website or any prospects that see your marketing activity are very unlikely to buy from you. If you don’t know what a call to action is, or would like to understand what is in more detail, then read our earlier blog post What is a call to action in marketing? 6 ways to make a call to action that generates leadsHere are some tips on how to make a call to action that generates leads for your business: Use orange and white Different colours impact the way we interpret something and how we react. Blue, for example, conveys trust, yellow conveys cheap or low cost while black conveys a more professional image. Depending on the offer and message of your marketing campaign you may want to use a different colour but we recommend using an orange box or button with white wording. Orange conveys urgency and urges the visitor to your page to take action and click. White is the best colour for making the call to action easy to read. Have an enticing offer and wording I have often talked about power words such as ‘now’, ‘only’ and ‘exclusive’ to urge the potential customer to take action but it’s more than just about the use of power words. The offer needs to be enticing as well. Ask yourself the question ‘would I take up this offer’. You may also want to ask colleagues or your closest customers for their feedback. Position it at the top The call to action needs to stand out and be easily accessible - and there’s no better place than having it at the top of your website or other marketing materials. In many circumstances (such as blog post or printed materials) you may find a good reason to have the call to action at the bottom or end of the content after the reader has looked through the content and understood what it’s all about - but you can have it at the top as well. As many as 80% of visitors to a landing page or website don’t scroll or read the content through to the bottom. If you only have a call to action at the bottom then most visitors won’t get to it so that they can take the action you want. Request as little information as possible There may be circumstances where you need information from the person taking action - an email address to send them something for example, but always work on the principle that the more information you request, the less likely they are to complete the process. No matter how good the offer is, there will be an increasing number of people who will not take advantage of what you are offering because they don’t want to have to supply the information required. A well-known problem faced by eCommerce businesses is shopping cart abandonment. Even when someone has found the product they want and added it their cart, they still give up before the process has finished. There are many reasons for this and one of them is the hassle of providing the information they need to. If you have a landing page offering a FREE guide and you want their email address to send it to them (and to market to them afterwards as part of the lead generation process) then it’s best to only ask for the email address and nothing else. Asking for contact number, name, address or anything else will increase the chances of them not pressing the call to action button. Reduce the number of clicks Similar to the above, the more clicks (or taps on a mobile device) the less likely someone is going to take action. Avoid redirecting a user to another page or sending them to a form to fill in. A call to action should be simple, straightforward and easy for the potential customer to action. Limit the distractions If you are creating a landing page to offer a free guide or to get in touch with you then your primary focus might be to ask for an email address and get the visitor to hit the call to action button. Anything else that's on that page acts as a distraction and reduces the chances they will complete the process. It might be tempting to add links to your social media, the About Us page and other offers but the mind is easily distracted and customers are easily lost! Ideally if you are spending money advertising and promoting the offer, you should have just one call to action - the one that captures contact details and offers what you are promoting. Why waste money driving people to your site, only to have them distracted by reading your latest blogs posts? I talk about various ways to create a landing page that converts in my book How To Create A Perfect Landing Page. If you would like help with creating the right marketing campaign and call to action then Contact Think Twice Marketing today for a FREE initial consultation.
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The terms "Call to action" sounds fairly straight forward but, in reality, many business owners, sales teams and marketers fail to grasp what a call to action is - or should I say, what an effective call to action is. In this article, we will discuss what a call to action is, how it should be use and how to make it as effective as possible. What is a call to action in marketing campaigns?A call to action is, as the name suggests, a call or message to prompt someone to take action - and while this sounds straightforward, it's often under used or under-estimated in how powerful it can be.
Many marketers either fail to have the right call to action, position it badly or don’t have a call to action at all in their marketing! The call to action (or CTA) can vary depending on various factors such as the type of campaign, the channel being used and the how ready a customer is to buy. In printed marketing and on a website the CTA could be a special offer and with a face-to-face meeting or phone call with a potential customer the CTA could be to arrange the next meeting or to email more information. Take it steady, or get to the point? For most businesses there are always customers who are ready to buy and customers who want to find out more about your brand, what you offer and if you are a trusted brand to buy from. Both types of customers should be targeted with different marketing campaigns. The customer who is willing to buy is more likely to accept a call to action that’s direct, such as ‘if you order today then you will receive an extra month for free and 20% off’ but a customer who is still in the early stages of making a decision is more likely to need a softer approach as part of a longer sales. In this case, offering a call to action such as a free guide on how to achieve something or another offer that isn’t immediately going to get the sale is more effective. In my next blog I will include more detail on how to make call to actions more effective but here are some ways you can be more effective in your marketing: Positioning A call to action needs to be easily accessible and having it at the top and the bottom of marketing materials and landing pages is more effective. If your website has lots of images and words then the call to action needs to stand out and having it visible at the top makes it easier to find. Have a CTA! It sounds obvious but it’s easy to forget a call to action. Check your marketing and communications to make sure you have a call to action as much as sensibly possible. This should include web pages, marketing materials, blog posts and your email signature - even if it’s just a link to drive someone to read your blog posts. Make it desirable, even irresistible! Sorry but ‘click here’, ‘sign up’ and ‘submit’ don’t get me excited and want to take action. Signing up and submitting are also considered negative subconsciously (are you ready to submit or commit to ‘signing up’ even if it’s just for a regular email newsletter?). Phrases such as ‘save me money’, ‘show me how’ and ‘join’ are more powerful and more likely to prompt a potential customer to take action. In my book, How To Create A Perfect Landing Page, I talk about how CTAs are possibly THE most important element in a landing page if the aim is to convert visitors into paying customers. You can find out more by grabbing a copy of my easy to read book on Amazon. If you need help designing more effective marketing campaigns and call to actions then get in touch for a free marketing review. |
written byThe opinions in these blog posts are those of marketing expert and book author Darren Hignett. Categories
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