Recently, I was having dinner with a friend. He is a small business owner and we were discussing the infamous ‘Call-To-Action’.
He was going on to say that he doesn’t get it.
Doesn’t get what all the fuss is about.
&
Doesn’t get the difference between forms and call-to-actions.
He was very traditional in his approach to making sales and doing business. Not so traditional that he couldn’t see the benefits of using technology to make sales, but I think he just enjoyed the more traditional method.
So after this conversation it got me thinking about what the specific definition of a call-to-action is. So it was time to do some research….
The Call To Action Definition
In marketing, a call to action (CTA) is an instruction to the audience designed to provoke an immediate response, usually using an imperative verb such as “call now”, “find out more”, or “learn more”.
So I then sent over this definition to my friend accompanied with my own 7 tips to help boost the success of his call to action.
I then realised that these 7 tips shouldn’t just be reserved for my friend and I should share these conversion boosting tips with the Strategic Marketing readers!
So without further a due here are:
“7 Tips To Get Your Website Visitors To Complete Your Call To Action!”
1. Have Compelling Copy-Writing
As it explains in the above definition your call to action needs to make use of some great eye-catching and action provoking wording. Using words such as:
- New
- Because
- Secret
- You
2. Use Images in Your Call To Action
Using images helps to direct attention to the call to action, and it can drastically improve the Click-through rate (CTR). Not only does it create a more eye-catching call to action, but it can also help trigger an emotion.
As an example, using a stock image of a person expressing an emotion has been proven to significantly improve the click rate on that call to action.
WHY?
Because using a human expression allows the reader to directly empathize with the image and therefore the CTR will be improved.
3. Use Statistics in your Call to Action
Statistics & facts will make your instruction impressive and credible, but also trigger curiosity.
Let’s face it, people just love juicy stats and facts.
You may just see your call to action results soar trigger its own nicer CTR statistics.
4. Keep it Short & Simple
When creating your call to action, making it as brief as possible can be huge. Ideally, no more than 5-6 words.
This causes the user to not get too confused with the CTA or with what is being offered. This also reduce the number of objections to completing a CTA.
5. Offer some sort of reward or benefit
This has begun to become very common practice so I briefly thought about leaving this one out, because it has become so popular, if it would just be a fad. But, using some sort of reward or as some might say “carrot” for completing the CTA will likely always trigger some more actions.
The most successful form of this is offering a form of content for free. Some of the more popular varieties are:
- Ebooks
- Whitepapers
- Video sessions or Webinars
- Consultation Sessions
6. If it’s a form, don’t make it too long
This is easy.
Don’t make your website visitors fill out too much information too early.
At the beginning of a relationship you can’t ask for too much.
7. Make your Button look like a “Button”
There is nothing worse than having a CTA button, that doesn’t look or feel like a button.
Website visitors are now subconsciously trained to know what “is” a button and what doesn’t look like a button, and the button itself will trigger the desire to get to know more.
So make sure that your button is designed like a button. Leave white space around it, have a simple button text (eg: Find Out More), usually rectangular (can have rounded edges, not a triangle).
Time for you to Test!
I highly advise that you take these tips, apply them (all at once or one at a time) and see how they impact your call-to-action conversion rates. Make sure you have the before and after data via Google Analytics so you can make intelligent decisions for future changes for now and for the future.
Some serious experimenting is the key to improving your online conversion rates, so just go ahead and test different colours, different button texts, different shaped buttons etc.
My last piece of advice is:
Test Everything!
Your own next step in Lead Capturing?
If you think improving your online marketing is important for you, I would suggest you try out our very own 2-min test here from us at Sonician in order for you to figure out if Marketing Automation could be for you. You’ll find it directly at: www.sonician.com/survey/2mintest/