Get More Conversions by Using a Strong Call to Action

The call to action, or CTA, is an important tool for effectively promoting your digital marketing offers. A strong call to action will help to get visitors to take an action on your website.

What is a CTA?

A call to action is any kind of visual or text queue that makes the visitor of a website take an action.

It is constantly used in websites, blogs, and advertisements to improve conversions. The most common kind is with a highly-visible button with a related headline.

Once the visitor clicks the button, they are redirected to a landing page or a specific offer. Keep in mind that the CTA should take your customers to the next step in your sales funnel.

We use call to actions on our site to help get people interested in special offers. For example:

Choosing the Best Call to Action for Your Business

Each business will have a few types of CTA’s that work better than others. The key is to test out multiple formats and see which ones convert the best.

Here are a few things to consider as you’re building out your sales funnel and website.

Determine the Goal of Your Call to Action

A CTA should serve the purpose of converting a website visitor into a lead or sale. When it comes to digital marketing, there are a few actions your can choose for your CTA:

• Generate a lead by capturing email or phone number
• Make a sale or subscription signup
• Free trial or demo signup
• Generate traffic to another article on your blog
• Obtaining followers, likes or shares on social media
• Schedule a consultation
• Obtain more information about your product or service

No matter what you choose for your call to action, it should help to move your visitors down your sales funnel.

Consider the Phase of the Sales Funnel

First of all, you must understand where in the sales funnel your call to action falls. Is it the first step or is it part way through the funnel as an upsell?

If you’re at the top of your sales funnel, you will have relatively cold traffic that doesn’t know much about your company. Your CTA should reflect this by offering more information to the visitors.

As you work through your sales funnel, you can get more specific calls to action that are appropriate for the specific stage.

For example:

1. Promote another blog post or article that provides free information
2. Offer a more detailed report for free in exchange for an email address
3. Provide a free consultation for your services
4. Purchase your service
5. Upsell a related product or service

Design for Your Traffic Type

The sales funnel starts with the content you post and includes your CTA and landing pages. As you’re designing these, think about what kind of customer you attract to your website.

For example, a call to action will be less effective for a person that visits your website for the first time. As they learn more about your company and come back multiple times, the chance of conversion increases.

The CTA is more relevant for someone who knows more about your business and the products or services you provide. In other words, someone who is already deciding to purchase.

For first time visitors, you can offer them an e-book or something similar which educates them and leads them to the next steps. This way, the possibilities of them becoming a lead will be higher.

Get to Know Your Visitors

The next step is to figure out who your target audience is. This should be who you are aiming to target with your post.

A good way to do this is to create a buyer’s persona for your major customer segments. You might know that your main customer base is composed of mothers over the age of 40. Use that knowledge to tailor your CTA to that group.

If you have an exclusive offer that is suited for mothers, use that information to craft your CTA. That way, you’ll be able to create a more relevant call to action.

At the end of the day, this will increase your conversions. You’ll be able to get more leads and sales for the same number of visitors, improving your revenue.

Know Your Audience’s Knowledge Base

A good strategy is to write your posts in a way that people from all levels of knowledge can understand.

Either too complicated information or too simple posts can be a problem if you don’t know what kind of audience is currently reading.

This goes back to knowing your ideal customer and how they think as they move through your funnel. You can tailor your call to actions to more advanced audiences using particular content.

Test the Best Format

The format of your offer is another important fact that you must consider while selecting the CTA.

This can be done through a variety of formats, depending on your website design and your goals.

You could create a call to action using any of these formats:

• A visual button with headline text
• Embedded in a post as either a text or image link
• In a sidebar or footer
• In your site’s menu bar
• A banner at the top or bottom of your site
• Popup box when a link is clicked or as exit intent

Attention, Education, Action

When designing a call to action, think about how you can capture your visitor’s attention to make them take an action.

Attention – Capture your visitor’s attention to make them aware that you have a special offer for them. If they don’t see your CTA, they won’t click on it.

Education – Tell them exactly what you’ll give them in return for them taking an action. Are you going to give them more information or help them with a problem?

Action – Ask them to take an action, which could be clicking a link or entering their email. Include a sense of urgency so that they don’t delay.

Test and Optimize

As with all aspects of your website, you should be using analytics to understand how well it is performing. Track how many people interact with your CTA and actually convert.

If you think a format isn’t working as it should, then maybe it’s time to change it up. Try combining it with another one or tweaking a small piece so you can obtain better results.

Even a small change, such as headline or button color, could have a dramatic impact on your conversions. It’s worth spending the time optimizing your call to actions to get better results for your sales funnel.