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Call To Actions (CTAs) are an essential part of the conversion path and lead generation process. To put it simply, a CTA is part of a story, webpage, advertisement, or piece of content that encourages the audience to take a desired action. CTAs can drive a variety of actions depending on the overall goal of the content.
In most cases, CTAs take your visitor to a landing page and guide them towards a form where they fill out their details in exchange for a premium offer. This is where the contact enters your CRM database. Essentially, CTAs can be effectively utilised across all marketing channels to drive conversions and convert visitors into marketing-qualified leads ready to pass over to the sales team.
For more detailed information about CTAs, you can read The Essential Guide to a Better CTA.
Defining your Call To Action goal
Before you create your CTA, you must determine your conversion goal. The way you structure your CTA and its supporting content should fit together to persuade prospects to take the desired action. Do you want them to download a high-value piece of content, register for a webinar or read a case study? Whatever your CTA, ensure you have clearly defined your goal before you begin crafting your call to action.
CTA buttons are the most important elements on your website and landing pages. They need to visually guide your visitors through the buying journey, clearly showing them what they can do next. CTAs provide direction and help your visitors take the next step with their decision-making process and your company.
Without CTAs, your visitors are less likely to engage with your content and more likely to leave your website without providing any way for you to get in contact with them.
Cut through the noise
Creating CTAs that generate high click-through rates is a practice that requires a lot of testing and learning to master and get right.
Follow our key best practices below and you’ll soon be on the way to crafting CTAs that truly cut through to your target audience.
Stand out from the crowd
Ensure the path to conversion is as clear as possible. Guide your visitors through your site to where you want them to go. Make sure your CTA is bold, clear and easy to find so it stands out to your readers. You can do this by using bold colours that contrast with background colours, and also by leaving plenty of white space surrounding the CTA button.
Effective CTA placement
The location of your CTA is a crucial factor that can make or break a prospect’s decision to convert. Place your CTA button above the fold (the part of the page that is visible without scrolling) to ensure your visitors can visibly see the button when they first land on the page without having to scroll further down. See the 3 golden rules of CTA placement.
Actionable language
Less is certainly more. Your CTA should be no more than five words. Incorporate compelling and exciting language into your CTA, alongside actionable verbs to drive conversion. Use verbs such as ‘discover’, ‘find’ and ‘request’, to empower your readers to click through.
The three C’s: Concise, Consistent and Clear
Don’t be afraid to get specific. When visitors know what they will get out of the proposition, they will be more likely to click on your CTA and take the next step in their decision-making process. Your call to action should have a clear meaning and the copy in your CTA should be representative of the action your visitors are taking. Don’t give your visitors the opportunity to second guess the value of your offer, the less guesswork your prospects have to do, the more likely they are to convert. The brevity and directness of a clear, well-written call to action will put the focus on what is most important and remove any distractions.
Messaging alignment
Ensure your CTA copy and landing page copy are aligned, and consistent and help move the visitor through the buying journey quickly and easily. The name of the item you are promoting, whether it is a white paper, case study or webinar should be consistent on your CTA button and landing page. If you mention that people can download a webinar on LinkedIn advertising, make sure you don’t refer to it as a presentation on the landing page. These details do really matter.
Create smart CTAs
With HubSpot’s Smart CTA tool, you can serve a visitor a specific CTA based on the following criteria types:
- Country
- Device type
- Referral source
- Preferred language
- Contact list membership
- Lifecycle stage
You can also personalise CTAs for different segments of your audience so certain call to action appear to select audiences. Over time, you can analyse your smart CTA performance and make any necessary adjustments to ensure you are successfully tailoring content to your website visitors.
Test, measure, learn and refine
It’s always best practice to test different variations of your CTAs to see what works well and what doesn’t. From copy and size to colour and placement, all aspects can affect the performance of your CTA and the only way you will know which combination will deliver the highest conversations is by trying them all and adapting them based on the results. It is a good idea to A/B test to find the best performer, so keep adjusting the copy, design, size and placement until you find a CTA that performs above all the rest.
You can read more about this in The Essential Guide to a Better CTA.
If you need some support in crafting the perfect CTA that will cut through or creating valuable content that will resonate with your target audience, and understand the world of Inbound even further, then why not book an Inbound Marketing Workshop with us?
Is your website generating high-quality leads? If not, then get in touch, it will be the first step to removing any existing conversion barriers!