Creating An Effective Call-To-Action

Quality content on a blog post or website is key to attracting prospective clients. At Sage Lion Media, every email we send, blog post we write, social media post we create, a call-to-action is included. In our blog today, let’s review what a call-to-action is and some best practices when creating an effective call-to-action.

What Is A Call-To-Action?

So what is a call-to-action? A call-to-action (CTA) is “an image or line of text that prompts your visitors, leads, and customers to take action,” according to Hubspot. It’s important to encourage prospects to contact your office or sign up for an event after reading a blog post or email. If they don’t, what’s the point of creating engaging content?

CTAs take prospective clients to a higher valued page on your website. If the call-to-action says, “Read more…” in the meta description on Google, this gets your prospect to your site. The page you direct that prospect to on your site should include another CTA which takes them further down the sales funnel.

Inbound Marketing Methodology by HubSpot

Best Practices

Since CTAs are all over websites which shows it’s not rocket science to create. However, creating an effective call-to-action takes a little more finesse. Such as a converting CTA that sends a clear message about why they should click and delivers that promise immediately. Including an action verb is Rule #1 when creating a call-to-action that converts. But just because you said, “download” or “click” doesn’t mean prospects will download or click.  Here are Sage Lion Media’s rules to an effective call-to-action:

  1. Actionable Messaging. Yes, you need more than an expressive verb to get people to click on a CTA but this is the first step. Without an action verb, you’ll just have a fancy graphic, words, and zero clicks.
  2. Make it clickable. You can have the most creative copy in your CTA but if it doesn’t look visually appealing and clickable, you will miss out on a lot of prospects.
  3. Create urgency. Nobody wants to be left out so let prospects know they need to download your ebook NOW! Include a countdown next to your CTA that informs prospects your ebook is only free for 48 hours. If you’re trying to fill up spots for an event, say, “Spots are limited. RSVP today!”
    Image of cell phone with download offer
  4. Focus on placement. CTAs should be weaved in naturally to a blog post. Typically you’ll find a call-to-action at the end of a blog but you can also place one in the middle, on the sidebar, at the top of the page. Whatever makes the most sense. Don’t go overboard and have a CTA in all locations.
  5. Color matters. A CTA needs to stand-out. If the webpage is blue, the CTA should be a different color. Easy enough! Pick a contrasting color that is still in your theme so it will pop out on the page.
  6. Size matters too. You want people to easily see the CTA but it can’t be too big that it takes away from the main content.
  7. Clear and concise. An effective CTA is short and to the point. A prospect should know exactly what they’re getting once they click on the link.

Pro tip: We like to do A/B testing on CTAs for our clients. We’ll play around with wording, placement, and sometimes the color to see what gets more clicks.

Start Creating

While a call-to-action encourages a prospect to take one more step down the sales funnel to become a lead. That action can be a link in an email that says, “Shop Our Lightweight Tents Now” and guides the prospect to your company’s brand new line of backpacking tents. Whatever you want your prospective customers to do, creating a CTA that gets clicks can turn those prospects into leads.