Did you know, over 90% of visitors who read your headline also read your call to action (CTA)?
That’s why it is crucial to have a CTA to help push viewers down the sales funnel and convert them into leads. This article will run through everything you need to know about CTA’s and we’ll break down the best tips and tricks for writing engaging and successful CTA’s.
To help clear up any ambiguity, a call to action (CTA) is a written directive used in marketing campaigns or at the end of a blog post/article to encourage website visitors to take a desired action. This action can be to purchase a product or service, register to a newsletter, download an asset, watch a video or continue browsing the content on the website.
A CTA can come in several forms. It can be a text hyperlink, button or just plain text to help conclude your content and instruct your audience on what action to take.
Did you know that 10 minutes after reading your content, your audience remembers around 50% of what they’ve read?
This percentage decreases as time goes on. So, after 24 hours of reading your content, your audience will only remember 25% of it and just one week after reading your content, they’ll remember less than 10%.
That’s why action is needed, and a CTA creates that sense of urgency and provides direction. Even if it’s just a two-word phrase, your content needs some form of direction, so your audience knows what to do next and doesn’t sign off. As long as your CTA encourages potential customers to stay engaged with your site, your CTA has done its job.
Similarly to how there is no fixed number of words to use in your introduction, the same goes for CTAs. However, for a typical 1,000-word article, we recommend a summarising section should be two to three paragraphs at most. These paragraphs should be three to four sentences long or 80-100 words.
As a general rule of thumb, the following points should be considered when you’re writing your CTA.
When starting your CTA, begin with a verb such as “buy”. Then follow this with an adverb like “now” or a subject like “eBook”. You could even use both. For example, “Buy our eBook Now”.
Here are a few examples you can use when drafting your CTA. Commonly for SaaS marketing, these are some prompts used:
If you’re after some general CTA prompts, here is a list of great ways to encourage action.
If you want your audience to take action and do something, you must understand them and know what makes them tick or what makes them want to react immediately. Having this level of emotion and enthusiasm is what will separate your content from generic, versatile content.
If your audience knows you can help with a specific problem or your content will aid them in some way, they are more likely to take action.
All you need to do is think about your customer avatar. Think about what they need, want and desire. Then, find any pain points, struggles or problems they may have, and from this craft a call to action that clearly communicates why taking action will improve their situation.
With content marketing in general, fluff is never a good thing. It can distract your reader or just make them lose interest. So instead, you need to get straight to the point.
That’s why minimalism is a copywriter’s best friend.
A direct CTA makes it easier for your reader to digest, absorb, and process the information and it tells them what action to take next. So keep your sentences concise, succinct, and useful. Tell the reader what, why, and how in as little detail as possible.
Make sure you give your reader a clear reason as to why they should take action. If you’re sitting on the fence or merely suggesting it and not able to convince yourself, you won’t be able to convince your audience.
Show them what’s in it for them and why they should continue with your site. You can do this by creating a unique selling point and merging that with your call to action. This can increase the number of visitors which are compelled to take action thus generating higher leads.
Also, emphasis on the how. How can your audience take action? Again, don’t use too much fluff or complex wording. Get straight to your point and make it very apparent what the next step is. You can use some of the verbs above and follow it up with a link, button or sign up sheet.
Here are a few great examples of well-executed CTA’s
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