GET YOUR AUDIENCE CLICKING WITH THE BEST CALL TO ACTION

In sales and marketing, your first “contact” with your target audience is through advertisements – and in any form of media, these ads always start with a simple yet often overlooked component: the Call To Action (CTA). Without a good CTA, the odds of your ad getting noticed is low, which is something that you wouldn’t want for your business.

As you may know, advertisements are extremely powerful – especially if used correctly. Apart from enticing and/or powerful images and headlines, a short yet appealing Call To Action makes or breaks an advertising campaign. Fortunately, finding the perfect CTA for your ads is possible with the help of these pointers.

The main point of a CTA is to tell your audience what to do – exactly the way you want them to do it. This not only ensures that you get better conversion rates, but it also enables you to provide a better user experience for your visitors. This sounds like a pretty straightforward approach, right? Yet a lot of advertisers still fail to achieve the results they want – mainly because the CTAs are not clear and concise.

• Primarily, a good and effective ad should contain an attractive headline – which you could take advantage of by using or adding a direct Call To Action right from the start. For instance, to get your audience to sign up for your gym, a simple “Register Here” button should be enough to accompany your headline that says, Get Fit and Fab.
  

• While there is no specific rule on this, clear and concise CTAs are usually less than 10 words, and CTAs that start with a verb have been proven to be the most effective in attracting your target audience.
• Simple action words such as “get” or “join” make a whole lot of difference in making the most out of the limited characters allowed on your CTA.

Most people don’t have the time or the patience (or both) to scroll down and read everything – so it is best to help your audience navigate through your page. To get your readers to stay interested, try to incorporate the following into your landing pages.

• Get to the point right in the beginning – let your audience know what it is that you offer, and tell them why they need it.
• Improve the user interface by using a clean format – you can achieve this even with just a few tweaks on the way you format, such as using bold-faced or underlined characters for key points.
• Make lists, tables, graphs, or forms wherever applicable – this will not only help your audience find what they need all in one place, but it will also help them understand it better.

Establishing your credibility can be achieved by speaking with authority and confidence – which could be a bit tricky to convey through written words.

With only a short time to capture your audience’s attention and with just a few words to do it, you have to make sure that your audience knows that you are the authority when it comes to the topic.

• Do not overwhelm your audience with too many options – focus on a couple of things to avoid them from getting distracted. Distracted customers will then turn into confused customers, and confused customers will not act the way you need them to. If customers are confused, it might also make it difficult for them to trust you and your business.
• Avoid instilling doubt – refrain from using words that might give a subliminal message about your credibility. The word “doubt” itself is an example; instead of “This Is No Doubt An Effective System,” you can use “See Why This System Is Effective” as your headline.
• Cite sources and examples whenever possible – this is especially helpful if you can show tangible results, like before and after pictures or testimonials for when you are promoting a diet plan.

The most common CTAs are popular for a reason – they get better click-through-rates and in turn have the better potential for conversion. However, since the length of both your CTA and your headline is limited to a few words, they might get repetitive through time. To avoid using the same ones throughout your campaign, here are some examples of common CTAs and the alternatives you can use.

• Sign Up – Join Us And Save 30%
• Vote! – Vote And Claim Your Rewards
• Download Now – Click Here To Get It For Free
• Create Account – Register For Unlimited Access

To “Go Big” in this sense is to make sure that you highlight your Call To Action in every way possible, so it can properly serve its purpose.

• Make sure that your CTA is seen – experiment with color, size, or typeface to create the necessary contrast between your call-to-action and the rest of the page.
• Typically, headings should be twice the size of the subheading, and both should preferably be in the same font family. This makes it easier for readers to absorb the information and remember it at the same time.
• Remember that designing for desktop is different from mobile – the whole layout and interface should match your target platform.

One sales strategy that might never get old and will continue to give your CTAs an edge over the others is providing rewards. Use rewards to make your call-to-action more enticing: adding freebies, discounts, or any kind of bonus can get more users to interact with your advertisements.

With rewards, while you are already providing the service or product that your customers expect, you are also adding value to what you are selling. The added value of benefits drives better conversion rates simply because customers are getting more bang for their buck.

Every Call To Action you make should be more appealing if you use simple yet tried-and-tested keywords, an easy-to-understand format, and a strategy that adds value to your services or products. This way, your potential customers can easily relate to your ads and take action in a way that will give your ad campaign better results.