Calls-to-action can be considered the linchpin of all marketing. You spend all this time and money on an ad, a landing page, or a commercial, convincing someone why they should take a second look at your product or service, but then it can all go down the drain because you don’t have a proper call-to-action (CTA).
A CTA is a phrase or word at the end of your marketing content that pushes someone to take the next step. That could push them to learn more, make a purchase, or join a newsletter. What your CTA should look like depends on where you are in the sales funnel, but you need to have one.
They’re easy to get wrong, and when you do, you can break a person’s immersion in your marketing. A CTA with different energy, language, or level of subtlety from the rest of your marketing will send almost everyone packing rather than taking the next step towards becoming a client or customer. Let’s work out how to do one right.
Where Do Calls-to-Action Go?
First, understand that CTAs belong in just about every form of marketing. They belong on:
- Web pages
- Blog posts
- Landing pages
- Social posts
- Video ads
- Facebook ads
- LinkedIn ads
- Twitter ads
- Instagram ads
- Billboards
The only place where you might not want to use a CTA is with certain Google search ads. It is worth considering when making a Google search ad that your target audience might be more likely to click on an ad that looks like a normal Google search result. Sometimes it’s best for a Google search ad to appear like a normal meta title and meta description, but not always. In all other instances, you want to have CTAs.
Where Do Calls-to-Action Go On the Page?
Unless you’re trying to push someone through multiple parts of the sales funnel with one piece of marketing media, you want to put the CTA at the very end of written and video content.
For image content, if there are words, it should be the last thing written. This is typically at the bottom, but it should be easily seen. If the CTA is the only written thing, it can go in the middle. It has to be something viewers are guaranteed to see. It’s best if the CTA is the last thing they see so it stays on their mind.
How to Write a Good Call-to-Action
There are four general parts to making the best CTA you can for your marketing content.
The Verb
It’s called a call-to-action for a reason. The action you ask them to take is important. If you’ve been trying to convince someone to view your shop throughout a succinct landing page, and your CTA is a button that says “shop now,” site visitors will turn around. Your CTA has to match what you’re going for.
In this example, a good CTA would be “see catalog now”, “view catalog now” or a number of synonyms. Some verbs to consider for CTAs include:
- Shop
- View
- Buy
- See
- Join
- Sign-Up
- Try
- Contact
Transitions
You can’t introduce a CTA at random. The last sentence at least, or the image altogether, should build to the CTA. It shouldn’t come out of anywhere, but rather act as the finishing sentence.
The best transitions are ones that use non-committal language and don’t speak with expectations. It is not a foregone conclusion that your marketing will be successful. It should always sound like your audience has a choice to make.
Be Concise
The longer your CTA, the less likely it is to succeed, which means you want to be straight to the point. This doesn’t mean that your CTA can’t cap off a long sentence. It means that the whole sentence shouldn’t be your CTA.
To know when your CTA begins, consider where the verb of your CTA is in the sentence. If the verb follows a transition word, such as “and,” “so,” or “also,” every word after that until the sentence ends is likely part of your CTA. You don’t want too many words before or after the CTA verb once your transition is done.
Add Pressure
We said before that you don’t want to assume that someone is going to follow through on your CTA, and that’s true. You can add pressure without your content assuming anything.
You can add pressure to follow through by offering a limited-time deal or specifying that your product or service is available for a limited time. This artificially removes an individual’s time to think and consider their purchase, subscription, or moving forward. This can convince someone to make the impulse decision to continue through the marketing funnel.
Forewarning, if you say that a product is temporarily on sale, or only available for a limited time, this has to be true. If you say this in an advertisement of any kind and it isn’t true, that’s illegal.
If you can’t afford to put a product or service on sale, or you want to get rid of a product you have a surplus of, you can use certain words that make someone believe there is reason to be urgent. Using words like “hurry”, “now”, and “too late” can make someone believe that something is only available for a limited time without you saying so. They make no promises, but they do convince your audience to click.
Contact a Marketing Firm That Understands CTAs
Calls-to-action are not easy despite accounting for a fraction of the marketing material you’re making. A lot of your marketing success depends on your CTA, so you can’t afford to make bad ones.
Instead of spending all this time learning about CTAs when you have a business to run, consider hiring an agency that knows how to do CTAs. The marketers at ENX2 Marketing have the experience you need, so contact us now.
