What Is a Call to Action?
A call to action, CTA, is an opportunity to clearly tell your audience what step you want them to take next. Unless you have mind control over your customers, getting them to move through the steps you want can be a frustrating process.
Using text links or graphics such as buttons with attention-catching content are examples of ways to call your audience to action and direct them to where you want them to go.
Since there are numerous things you may want to encourage your audience to do, you need to know that your calls to action will be effective so your customers get what they need and you win more conversions.
How Are CTAs Actually Used?
A good call to action communicates to readers what their next step should be, and gets them excited about it. Simply telling someone what to do isn’t enough. You have to make them want to do it. How? Appeal to human nature.
No one wants to miss a deal or feel left behind. The language you use needs to promote a sense of urgency.
Keep the message short.
For example, a call to action for an online dating service may say something like “Find your soulmate today!” or “Get matched now!” Using words like “find” and “get” make the reader feel exclusive, and words like “today” and “now” give the impression that time is of the essence.
The exact details of your CTAs will depend on what you want the call to action to achieve.
If you want to generate more leads from your website, you should think about the pages new viewers are most likely to visit and place CTAs accordingly. From there, you can redirect them to other webpages you want them to see so you know they aren’t missing the best parts of your website.
Lead generation can be further nurtured by using a CTA to encourage viewers to fill out form submissions so that you have their contact information or any other useful piece of data you want to collect.
CTAs can even be used as a tool to keep your social media followers engaged by allowing them to easily share content across platforms.
Regardless of what function your CTA is performing, it needs to be designed well in order to have the biggest impact.
While it’s okay if all of your call to actions share some common design elements, it’s important that they not all look alike. It’s also important that your CTA buttons are easily distinguished from non-CTA buttons
If it isn’t obvious which buttons are meant to propel readers into action, they won’t stand a chance of influencing behavior. Likewise, if all your CTAs look the same, your readers may learn to overlook or ignore them.
Similar CTAs also present the problem of competing priorities. If multiple CTAs exist on a single page, they should be prioritized so that the primary CTA is the most eye-catching.
Experiment with contrasting colors, button shape, and other design elements to keep your calls to action fresh and attention-grabbing.
How Else Do CTAs Help Businesses?
Not only do CTAs tell your current and prospective clients what you want them to do, they also make it easier to win conversions.
With the simple click of a button, you can direct them to pages with high conversion rates and important information.
Instead of trusting your website visitors to view the pages you want them to, you can add CTAs that guide them to the content most likely to close sales.
CTAs also increase the number of pages your viewers visit, sometimes referred to as your click-through rate. This increases the chance that a lead becomes a sale, and it helps improve your search engine optimization (SEO).
Higher click-through rates contribute to a site’s overall search engine ranking, so CTAs can increase traffic to your website as well. You aren’t limited to using call to actions only on your website, though. You can use them in email campaigns, social media and blog posts, and targeted ads.
Conclusion
A good CTA has to serve multiple purposes at once. It may seem like an easy task to tell your audience what to do, but making them want to listen is a harder sell.
An effective CTA has to catch the eye, appeal to emotion, convey urgency, and meet the needs of both the business owner and the customer.
Carefully Crafted is here to advise you of ideal CTA placement and design across all your marketing content and get you on your way to using powerful calls to action to help you achieve your business goals.
