Learn More About Effective CTA's
What You'll Learn
In this class, we’re going to discuss how to use Calls-to-Action or CTAs, in the conversion process. After this class you’ll understand how CTAs fit into a successful conversion process, recognise what an effective call-to-action looks like and how to apply best practices to your own CTAs.
Why Is This Important?
Put simply, you can’t get leads without a conversion process. And some of those leads will eventually become paying customers.
In this class, we’re going to discuss how to use Calls-to-Action or CTAs, in the conversion process. After this class you’ll understand how CTAs fit into a successful conversion process, recognise what an effective call-to-action looks like and how to apply best practices to your own CTAs.
Why Is This Important?
Put simply, you can’t get leads without a conversion process. And some of those leads will eventually become paying customers.
Step 1: Understanding CTA's
CTAs (short for "calls-to-action") are what connect your personal trainer website and blog to your landing pages. They are the clickable buttons that compel a casual reader to become a qualified lead by filling out one of your forms.
In short, they are hugely important to your inbound marketing success. Fortunately, there's a science to them.
CTAs can be placed on your website pages, your blog and in your emails. Since they kick off the conversion process, they’re a critical first step.
In short, they are hugely important to your inbound marketing success. Fortunately, there's a science to them.
CTAs can be placed on your website pages, your blog and in your emails. Since they kick off the conversion process, they’re a critical first step.
Step 2: How to Create CTA's?
CTAs are big business assets, so it’s important to follow best practices when creating them.
Our call-to-action should be action-oriented. Its purpose, after all, is to get our visitors to take a certain next action – to download an eBook, or watch a video, or request a free trial. Don’t make your visitors think too hard about what they need to do next –just tell them!
Clear, direct action verbs make for a great call-to-action. In this example, it says “Download now”.
Our call-to-action should be action-oriented. Its purpose, after all, is to get our visitors to take a certain next action – to download an eBook, or watch a video, or request a free trial. Don’t make your visitors think too hard about what they need to do next –just tell them!
Clear, direct action verbs make for a great call-to-action. In this example, it says “Download now”.
The word “download” makes it pretty obvious what will happen next. Also, keep your message brief. Your CTA won’t take up too much room on a page or in an email. It’s always going to be secondary to the rest of the content.
When choosing the action-oriented words, consider the offer and your buyer persona and try out different action verbs like request, sign up, download or receive. Remember to use keywords that are consistent with your offer and landing page.
Next, it's important to grab someone’s attention. There are a lot of misconceptions about best practices for making a call-to-action attention grabbing. Some people think they must be a certain color or size, or that they must use images. However you choose to design your call-to-action, it needs to stand out so that visitors will know to click on it. Visitors recognise clickable elements like buttons and links.
Consider your buyer persona’s tastes when designing a call-to-action. Your buyer persona might prefer something flashy and bright or they might like a simple, minimal button. Think about what would be appealing to them and how they typically navigate through websites.
If you’re not sure, that’s okay. You can always conduct research or test things out. Use highly-contrasting colors or an accent color that aligns with your company’s branding. This will help your CTAs stand out, visually.
You’ll also want to use strong and appropriate on-page placement for your CTAs. On some pages, this may mean featuring a call-to-action above the fold --in other words, before a visitor has to scroll. This way, your CTA will be one of the first things they see when they land on a page.
Wherever you decide to place them, CTAs should seem like they belong on the page. There’s not necessarily a right or wrong place to put them, just remember that they should be easy to notice, attention grabbing and should fit logically with everything else on the page.
For example, it doesn’t make sense to offer an eBook on your pricing page. In this scenario, the visitor might already have the information contained within the eBook. A visitor on your pricing page is gathering information about your pricing structure and approaching the decision to buy.
Your Blog Posts
When it comes to your blog, it’s logical to place a call-to-action at the end of a blog post like the CTA at the end of this blog post titles "How Much protein Can you Absorb in One Sitting". This example CTA is closely related to the blog post topic.
You've put in a lot of time into your blog posts. Rather than interrupting the content, have your CTA at the bottom of the post to provide that next step. Additionally, you could place a CTA in the sidebar of your blog to promote your latest offers or an upcoming event.
The Sidebar
The sidebar is a good place to grab someone’s attention and give someone an opportunity to take the next step, like joining your next live webinar.
Typically, CTAs in your sidebar should be general offers so that they are applicable to the widest variety of people reading your blog. When it comes to CTAs in an email, those can be placed at the end of the email, paragraph, sentence, or really anywhere that grabs attention without being distracting.
Remember, driving lead conversion is your goal, not our reader’s goal, so make sure that they can easily read your content first, and only convert if they choose to do so.
Step 3: Test Your CTA's
The last step is to test changes and analyse their results. When analysing the effectiveness of a CTA, a good goal to aim for is a 1-to-2 percent clickthrough rate. This means that out of all who viewed the CTA, 1 to 2 percent clicked on the button.
So a successful CTA would result in 1 or 2 visitors clicking on the CTA out of 100 people. When comparing clicks to submissions, ten percent is a great goal.
For those that clicked on the CTA and made it to the landing page, how many of those people submitted the form and became a lead? If we had 50 people that made it to the landing page from the CTA, and if 5 of them filled out the form on the landing page, we’d have a 10% click-to-submission rate and in turn, a successful CTA.
Whenever you experiment with your CTA designs, make one small change and see how it performs. If I change the CTA text and its color, it won’t be clear which change made it more or less successful. Start with a small change, like the color, and see if it gets more clicks.
Testing and analysing will not only help you create more effective CTAs, but it will also give you a better idea of what your buyer persona likes.
To finish up, here are all of those best practices once more.
Keep these best practices in mind for the next time you create or change a CTA and analyze the results
So a successful CTA would result in 1 or 2 visitors clicking on the CTA out of 100 people. When comparing clicks to submissions, ten percent is a great goal.
For those that clicked on the CTA and made it to the landing page, how many of those people submitted the form and became a lead? If we had 50 people that made it to the landing page from the CTA, and if 5 of them filled out the form on the landing page, we’d have a 10% click-to-submission rate and in turn, a successful CTA.
Whenever you experiment with your CTA designs, make one small change and see how it performs. If I change the CTA text and its color, it won’t be clear which change made it more or less successful. Start with a small change, like the color, and see if it gets more clicks.
Testing and analysing will not only help you create more effective CTAs, but it will also give you a better idea of what your buyer persona likes.
To finish up, here are all of those best practices once more.
- CTAs should be action oriented.
- They should include keywords that are consistent with the offer you are marketing on the landing page.
- A CTA should grab attention and stand out as a clickable button.
- Also, they should use strong and appropriate on-page placement.
- And finally, after you’ve created a CTA, test out new changes one at a time, analyze the results, and repeat.
Keep these best practices in mind for the next time you create or change a CTA and analyze the results