Sealing the deal

The power of a strong call to action

Effective marketing strategies work by encouraging your audience to take action. Whether that’s buying your product, contacting your sales team, or simply following an ad through to your website to find out more about the business.

But it’s not as simple as just creating engaging marketing material. If you want to start seeing more sales, better conversions, and better results from your content, it’s time to pay equal attention to the finer details. Namely, your call to action – the CTA.

The “so what?” of your marketing

CTAs prompt an immediate response or action from your audience. For example, a ‘buy now’ button on an ad or saying ‘get in touch today’ at the bottom of a blog post.

Without a CTA, all your marketing efforts exist in isolation. You might put time, effort, and resources into crafting powerful, persuasive marketing materials for your business. But, without telling your reader what you want them to do next with the glorious information you’ve provided, they might simply wander off to the next thing that catches their eye. 

Your CTA is whatever you want the recipient of your marketing – whether that’s on your website, Instagram, or anywhere else – to do once they’ve enjoyed your content. 

More than 90% of visitors who read a headline will also read the CTA. And emails with a single call to action have proven to increase clicks by 371% and sales by 1,617%. It’s worth taking the time to get your call to action just right.

A call for clarity

The key with CTAs is clear, concise messaging and design. A strong CTA convinces your audience to act, meaning it’s best if your audience can quickly and easily understand what’s being asked of them. A direct, informative CTA that doesn’t waffle on or get bogged down with unnecessary information is ideal. 

Placement, design, colour, size, and font are all also worth considering. 

We’ve spoken before about content marketing and how the content you produce isn’t about selling your business directly, but rather about adding value. Found at the end of your content, the CTAs is where you bring things back around to your business specifically. They’re how you sell yourself in a sentence or two and suggest an action for your reader to take.

There are no hard and fast rules for how long or short an effective CTA should be. Or what it needs to say. But, no matter what, the messaging should be clear, authoritative, and enticing for your audience.

A call for variety

It’s worth noting that you don’t always have to push towards a sale. Sometimes, it’s equally beneficial to encourage your audience to explore more of your business. 

For example, while you might have a more direct request at the end of an email or blog post asking your reader to call to find out more, you might also include some sidebar CTAs to direct your audience to your social media accounts, website homepage, blog, contact page, or other places of interest. 

The more you encourage your audience to explore, the higher the likelihood of securing conversions. And the more well-rounded view they will gain of your business.

Think of the call to action like the cherry on top of an excellent piece of marketing content. Without it, you’re publishing material with no direct goal in mind. Including a CTA is how you encourage greater engagement and interaction from your audience, secure sales, and gain new leads. It’s how you go from sharing information about your business to actively growing it.

If you want to make your marketing strategy work harder for your business, get in touch with us today.