The Call To Action (or CTA) is a bit of a copywriting mantra; it has to be said. I sound like a stuck record to my clients when I’m forever saying to them ‘Don’t forget about your Call To Action!’. But there’s a good reason for it, and I’m going to tell you all about the Call To Action right now, so you know exactly why I’m a CTA-nag 😉
What exactly is a Call To Action, then?
Apart from sounding a lot like a call to arms, it’s a simple tool to encourage your followers, readers and potential clients to take the next step. It’s a guide, an instruction, a persuasion which shows people where they should go next in their journey of discovery about you and your business. It aims to get an immediate response from your reader to, quite literally, get them to take action!
Ok, but why do I need a Call To Action?
Here’s the thing… business and marketing have changed a lot in recent years, especially with easy access to the internet for both sellers and buyers. It’s a busy place. It’s a loud and crowded place. And people don’t have time to start digging around to try and figure out how to spend their money. A Call To Action saves them that time. They read the blog post and want to find out more? They click the button that says ‘Find out more’! They’ve looked at your packages and pricing and want to know how to book? The CTA tells them exactly where to do that.
Call it being busy, call it being lazy, whatever you prefer. But if you want people to TAKE ACTION on your website and sign up to your newsletter, get in touch or buy the product, you have to show them the way.
The harsh truth is, if you don’t include a great CTA, then you are losing potential clients quicker than you can say CALL TO ACTION.
Ok, I get it! So, how do I do it?
So, here’s the fun part! Because there’s no one set way of including a Call To Action in your website copy. And you can have many types in many different places throughout your site.
How many?
Typically a CTA will appear at the end of a block of text, or the end of a blog post. But you might see it interspersed through a sales page at least three or four times. When it comes to how many CTAs you should include, I always say less is better. If you were in a shop and the sales assistant kept saying, ‘Buy it NOW!’, you’d be walking out of that shop pretty quick, throwing them a weird look as you went, wouldn’t you? But less CTAs means you have to make them GOOD. We’ll get onto that in a mo…
Define your purpose
Know precisely what you want your reader to do next before you write your CTA. Do you want them to subscribe to the mailing list? To download the lead magnet? To read another blog post? To fill out the contact form? To buy the product? These, and many other actions, are all possibilities. Be clear about which you’re asking your reader to do before you get to that point of asking them to do it.
Decide your technique
A CTA can be anything from a strict instruction (‘Book Now!’) to a gentle persuasion (‘We’d love to hear from you’).
You can persuade by linking it to a potential pain point, such as: ‘Are you struggling to get those blog posts written? Let’s chat and get your blogs back up and running.’
You can also use deadlines or limited numbers to create a feeling of scarcity, like this: ‘For a limited time only, sign up for a special discount.’
I love CTAs that are a little more conversational and fun, where possible. You can ask a question in your CTA text and then have the button say ‘Yes please!’ or ‘Let’s do this!’, for example.
Remember…
CTAs don’t have to be set in stone. If you’re finding you’re not getting many conversions from a particular page or CTA, give something else a try instead! When you find the magic CTA that works, you’ll know 🙂
But if you’d rather have me write your Call To Actions for you (along with some pretty awesome website copy), drop me a message and let’s see what I can do!