A great call to action for your business will ensure that you pull in your target audience. More than 90% of your audience who read your headline will also view your call to action. If B2B selling is the next frontier for your company, your message has to be targeted towards business. Forget about coming up with a generic call to action. This is one of the most important parts of any piece of content you post online.
There are multiple aspects that make up a great call to action, and this guide is going to show you how to use it to promote your service online.
One Message
So many companies try to cram as many call to actions into the bottom of their blog as possible. They want you to subscribe to their newsletter, contact them, and buy their latest product. Anyone knows that business is really about gathering intelligence and this should show you what the most effective call to action is.
If you deviate from the best call to action, you are guaranteed to confuse your readers. Tell them one thing and one thing only.
Follow Through on the Promise
Understand that a call to action is a promise. It may not be an overt promise, but this is how you should be taking it. When you tell someone to subscribe to your newsletter what you are really saying is that they are going to get something of value from it.
So how do you make sure that this happens?
Make sure that whatever you are directing traffic towards is actually worthwhile so you don't get any negative social proof. Fail to do this and your online reputation is bound to take a hammering.
Make it Easy
You likely already know that people have short attention spans and if you don't make your business processes as simple as possible they are going to look else. One of the biggest mistakes that companies make with their call to actions is that they only tell them what to do not how to do it.
It isn't necessary to have a huge instruction manual at the bottom of your post. Just leave a link that takes them directly to the page you want them to go to.
Be Forceful
Businesses are often tentative about the language they use. They don't want to use tough talk or hard language because they think that it's only going to turn their prospects away. It couldn't be further from the truth because studies have shown that hard, forceful language does grab people's attention and it does get them to act.
Go Personal
In grade school, you were likely told to avoid the second person 'you'. An effective call to action must be personal. Think about someone trying to shout out commands to a crowd. If they shout a command, it will go over everybody's head and will likely be ignored.
Now imagine that person points directly at you and shouts the command. This is going to grab your attention straight away and you are more likely to actually do what's being asked of you. The same principle applies to a great call to action. Act like you are telling that specific person what to do.
Where is the Value?
Ultimately, people are not going to follow through on a call to action if it doesn't give them something in return. Your value proposition will determine whether someone is going to click or not. This value proposition has to be clearly outlines. Don't tell someone what something is tell them how it's going to benefit them.
What are they going to get out of it?
Create a Contrast
Don't just make your call to action look like everything else on your site. Make a graphic with a clickable button. Have it stand out from the rest of your site's design. This will lead to a natural focal point that people will be drawn to when scrolling down the page.
But Where Do You Put It?
A call to action doesn't always have to go at the bottom of the page. With many pieces of content, site owners will place their content at the top of the page. And then they'll place another one after the piece of content. By doing this, you are setting the tone immediately.
You are also increasing the number of chances you have of encouraging someone to click.
Conclusion
The way to create a great call to action is to make sure you are well aware of what you want people to do and to make it loud and clear. Be forceful, get right to the point, and test your call to action afterwards.