What is a call-to-action?

You don’t want a potential customer to think “now what?” after consuming your content. A great call to action (CTA) will prevent this and guide your consumers through the buyer journey. A CTA is a prompt on your email, website, or social media that encourages customers to undertake an action desired by you. 

A good one will positively impact your conversion rates so remember not to ask a question or give the prospective customer a chance to say no. Instead, give a direct command that they have to follow. For example, instead of “do you want to book a call with one of our consultants?”, say “”book a call with one of our consultants today”. 

They tend to go at the end of emails, captions, blogs, or whatever medium you use for your content. Simple ones include:

• Subscribe to our channel!
• Download our free ebook today!
• Buy now for 25% off!

But, why are they important?

Well, they help with decision fatigue. The quality of decisions deteriorates the more decisions are made. So, being told to download a free ebook means that it’s one less decision for you to make - you’ll simply download it! They also help to guide the prospective customer through the customer journey and tell them what to do next, all while boosting your conversions! Great, right? 

What makes a good call to action?

• Great design - The button/text itself should grab prospective customer’s attention.
• Easy to read - Don’t have a tiny grey font on a white background - make text bigger, bolder, and a contrasting colour so it is easier to read. It’s also best to make sure that your CTA is appropriate for the device it’ll be used on. For example, a laptop CTA may need to be optimised differently than a mobile phone CTA. 
• Good copy - Use verbs or “doing words” to make the reader take action. It should also be short and snappy with a sense of urgency such as “download our free guide now!” 

How can I use a call to action?

• To build a customer base - by directing to your website or blog from a YouTube channel (or vice versa), awareness of what you do as a brand will grow. 
• To generate leads - use a CTA to create an email list of people interested in your product or service. For example, having a CTA stating to, “sign up to our newsletter today for 10% off” will entice people already interested in your product to become future customers while giving you a means to communicate with them further.
• To complete a sale -  a simple CTA stating to “buy now while stocks last” incites FOMO - fear of missing out - amongst your potential customers, pushing them to become a customer and buy from you.

By following these steps and removing pain points, potential customers will have no choice but to follow the call to action that you outlined. 

ESM Inbound’s top tip: If you’re unsure as to whether your call-to-action is working, you can try A/B testing. This is where you try one call-to-action and then swap to another call-to-action and compare the results of both campaigns to see which was most effective.