Call To Action - Delivering Sales From Content Marketing

The phrase Call To Action (CTA) is a term that is consistently referred to in recent years whenever a discussion about social media strategy crops up. The truth is Call To Action’s have been the core of any marketing strategy for decades. In the past these have been verbal, frequent in marketplaces with vendors shouting about their goods from their stalls. As businesses have evolved the CTA style has changed but the core aim of the CTA has not. In this blog we explore the different types of digital CTA and how to make them work for your business.

What is a Call To Action? (CTA)

A call to action is the trigger that you place in your marketing materials to encourage your audience to take an action after consuming your content. As with all marketing messages you have to first establish what your message is. Once you have decided your message you need to consider what action you want your audience to take.Examples of common calls to action for Facebook and Twitter include: “Click Here”, “Book Now”, “Learn More”, “Sign Up” or “See in store today”. Calls to action are also found on other social media posts, television adverts, email broadcasts and printed flyers.

Why use a Call To Action?

Imagine you are discussing your business face-to-face with a potential new customer; before you finish the conversation you may have used the phrases “You must come down and visit us” or “Please take a look at our website to see our other products”. Every time your business digitally makes a Facebook post, a tweet, or an advert you are having that face-to-face conversation with thousands of people at once. Therefore you will want to trigger an action.

What are the different types of Call To Action?

Advance Bookings - Book Now, Click To Book, Reserve Your Table Here, Experience TodayDatabase Sign Up - Join The Club, Register, Learn More, Join the Family, Become ___ Royalty, Become a VIP, Start Your JourneyFeedback - Give Feedback, Tell us what you think, How did we do today?Social Growth - Like Page, Share, Tell your friends, Tag us in photo and add the #....Website Traffic - Like Page, Share, Tell your friends, Tag us in photo and add the #....Video or Sound - Listen Now, Watch Now, Listen Again, Watch Again

How do you create a successful Call To Action?

There are a number of key factors that you should consider when creating, placing and using a call to action in your marketing:

• Colour – Paying particular attention to the colour of your CTA is a great way to make sure it stands out from the rest of your content. Use a bold colour perhaps the same colour as your logo but not used anywhere else on your page or advert.
• Position – Along with the colour, another key point to have in mind is where on the page it is placed. If this is a web page add a “Book Now” to the top of the page and also to the bottom of the article your audience is engaged with. A customer may not scroll all the way down to the bottom so may miss the CTA. Keeping the CTA visible as the audience scrolls through your page means they can act at any time.
• Reward – The action could have a pull to encourage customers to interact. If you are wanting customers to fill in a survey around a visit or product then offer them something for doing so – e.g. a discount on their next visit.
• Options – To encourage clickthroughs why not offer your customers a number of options for clicks. Think about useful things that your customers might like to do. For example options to click through to the website, social media, booking page and other event/campaign specific web pages can all work to encourage customers to interact.

How can using a different Call To Action impact different parts of my business?

It is key to remember that CTA's apply across your whole marketing strategy in order to support growth and ultimately increase revenue for your business. When a call to action is effective and interaction is triggered from your audience, you are ensuring that they are engaged, interested and happy to receive further communication from you. Ensuring a customer maintains an interest in what you are projecting across your marketing strategy is the key to achieving success and growth.Examples:Social Media Post - Audience sees a post and follows through on the action you request - it could be a booking, a website visit or a purchase.Social Media Advert - Audience sees the promoted post, perhaps more than once in a week, which then triggers a booking or purchase. The repeated message is Book Now.Website - A customer may browse through your website, add things to their basket and create an account to save for later - this could lead nicely into a journey to re-engage the dropped basket.Email Broadcast - Bold use of colour or animated GIF with Book Now or Shop Now can trigger customer interaction.Google Advert - The use of Google Adwords to make sure your brand effectively pops up on sites that google has advert space on after the customer has interacted with your brand.Remember to always keep it relevant, informative and clear so that your call to action encourages the highest possible interaction rates.