Strategic calls to action, also known as CTAs, are one of the most valuable aspects of any Digital Marketing strategy. These words or lines of text are directly responsible to encourage your visitors to take action, such as joining a webinar, contacting you for more information, submitting forms, subscribing to your newsletter, or following you on social media.
Think about all the times you've signed up for things in your life. Each of these registrations is likely the result of an effective call to action (CTA).
Calls to action are often thought of as just a button if you think about it. Too often, CTAs are left out or stuck in the design as an afterthought, which is a tragedy. Weak CTAs lead to confused visitors and lost opportunities when potential customers exit the conversion funnel and walk away from your business. In this post, we give you six ways to create compelling CTAs that really drive results for your website.
How to make your CTA effective?
When it comes to creating a clear and effective CTA, it needs to be simple, relevant, creative, compelling. You may need to incorporate the element of urgency into your sentences and make them short, actionable, simpler, and to the point. You may also need to highlight the reason or benefit of why your visitors and readers should take the desired action. Let's take a closer look at how to create the perfect CTA for your website.
Use Actionable words
The first step in creating an effective and compelling call to action is to use powerful command verbs or actionable words. It's about being concise and direct with your sentences, and not confusing your audience. For example:
E-commerce business: "order", "purchase" or "shopping".
To download something - "download".
Join your mailing lists - "join" or "subscribe".
Sense of urgency
Fear of Missing Out or FOMO is a form of marketing and psychological trigger that harnesses a customer's desire to seize every opportunity presented to them. A good example of this is the inclusion of a timer under the CTA of "Avail your Discount Now!"
Let your audience know why they should take action
An effective proposition can help you attract and retain customers, as well as increase your clicks and conversions. According to previous reports, incorporating value propositions into your CTAs could increase conversions by 201%. For example - "Contact us today for free quotes."
Build curiosity
Tickling their sense of curiosity as per their interests is a powerful method of encouraging them to click and find out what comes next on the other side of your calls to action. Creating curiosity can increase your sales and click-through rates. To spark curiosity, you can ask your visitors questions, or keep them hooked by sharing an interesting fact or information. For example, you can create quizzes around your products or services and help your readers find what they are looking for.
Make your calls to action consistent
For example, if you place a CTA at the end of your blog content related to improving search engine rankings and want your readers to download your free guide, you need to make your CTA more descriptive, by using "Improve Your SEO With This Free Guide!" Instead of "Download our free guide".
Personalized CTA
Another way to create the perfect call to action is to personalize it and make it smarter. Custom CTAs can outperform basic CTAs by 202%, according to a report. The reason is that you are creating content that can reflect the current interest of your audience. For example: reflect the location of the individual, the language they use, or whether they are your existing customers or prospects. One of the best ways to create custom CTAs is to use software tools.
Utilise Prices info
Consumers are known to be more responsive when they see prices, promotions, or discounts included in or alongside your calls to action.
Call-to-action button with appropriate size and shape
If you operate an eCommerce website, one of the best things you can do to instantly grab your visitors' attention is to use the right size and shape. Your CTA buttons should be large enough for your audience to see and easier to click.
Place your calls to action strategically in your content
If you plan to use CTAs for your web pages, you can place them at the top of each of your pages, or if they're for your blog post, you can place them at the end of your content, or somewhere in the middle of the article, if your blog is long. You can even insert a CTA in your sidebar, welcome pop-up, or email marketing content.
Target Problem & solutions in your CTA
Use CTAs that offer solutions to specific problems. For example, you need to ask and answer what problem your products or services solve, and how to show that your solution can solve the problem. A good example of such a CTA is "Want more email subscribers?" You won't get them without the right action prompts."
Why you should test your calls to action
By testing your CTAs, you can measure your clicks and find out how effective your CTA is. You can also test their colours, sizes and shapes. According to the results of the button colour test, a red CTA button performed better than a green button by 21% based on 2,000-page visits. In other words, if changing a minor element of your CTA button can increase the number of clicks to your website, you might want to know what other elements could be affecting your traffic and conversions.
Final thoughts
Embedding call-to-action words and phrases into your website content can improve its performance, help your target audience avoid confusion as they navigate your site, and lead them to the end of the conversion funnel.
