Call To Action Marketing [The Definitive Guide To CTA]

Have you ever searched for some aesthetic ideas on Pinterest and ended with signing up for the site? Remember joining Netflix for free for 1 month or signing up for Uber even when you don’t want to ride? Ever bought an item from Amazon just because the sale would go off after ten minutes?

All these are examples of successful call to action marketing strategies that these companies used to complement their core marketing strategies.

What Is Call To Action Marketing?

Call to action Marketing (or CTA Marketing) is the strategy of creating a stimulus that is strong enough to persuade the user to make an immediate response to your marketing scheme.

It utilizes call to action techniques to create a sense of trigger in the minds of the users by using imperative verbs which subtly instruct them to perform a specific task like filling a form, subscribing, or getting redirected to a landing page.

Consider Spotify, for example.

spotify landing page

Upon entering the website, the first thing we notice is the “Get Spotify Free” button, placed in the centre of the screen and designed in a manner that gains maximum attention.

This button is a variant of the technique used in CTA Marketing, known as call to action (usually abbreviated as CTA).

What Is Call To Action (CTA)?

To be honest, at some point in time, we all have shared contact information or bought an item or experienced being directed to some landing page or subscribed for free to some site or the other.

This is all the impact of the compelling call to action mechanisms.

Call to action is a marketing tool designed to prompt the users to take rapid action or to encourage an immediate sale.

It is literally, a Call to your users/clients to perform an Action. It is one of the key elements on a webpage and tells them what to do next.

For example, while purchasing an item online, CTA buttons like add to cart or add to wishlist or buy now ensure that the user knows the directions in which they can head further and can decide their next step with ease.

Talking of the numbers, Qubit has released a meta-analysis of multiple experiments that depicts the following results about the probability of improvements produced by call to action marketing in various domains. Here are few of them for your reference-

  • CTA marketing has the capability to uplift revenue per visitor with a probability of 24%.
  • It has an uplift probability of 35% in the conversion rate.
  • It uplifts revenue per converter with a probability of 36%.

While CTAs are most prevalent in the form of buttons or inline links that assist you to some other webpage, there are many other alterations of CTAs which can be used as per requirement to increase the amount of activity and engagement on your page. To name a few, CTAs exist in the form of pop-ups, slide-ins, sidebars, and social sharing buttons. They can be conversion generating, business-centered, or content boosting.

But let me tell you, call to action marketing is not some kind of rocket science. Here’s how you can implement it in the most efficient way.

Creating A Compelling Call To Action Strategy

Here are some keys you must not miss while forming a solid call to action scheme for your clients.

Aesthetics

The first imprint that your CTA has on the viewers’ mind plays a major role in how they will respond to it. The first impression is the decision maker in the case of call to action marketing. You must focus on the color, style, and type of your CTA strategy (button, inline, pop-up, form).

Take the landing page of Klientboost as an example. There are 2 CTA buttons on the web page (each serving the same purpose, but placed and colored differently).

Here’s what you have to do-

Locate the 2 CTA buttons and compare the amount of attention each one is able to gain from you:-

klientboost homepage CTA

Placement

How you place your call to action scheme along with where you place it are two key factors in determining the likeliness of a customer stopping by and reacting to it. The call must stand out as compared to everything else in the client’s view. It must not be surrounded by loads of text and should be placed preferably in the center of the page, or any other location that is more likely to gain attention.

Consider the following web page to aid yourself in understanding the role of correctly placing your CTA scheme:-

Here’s your task-

There are 2 “Get Started” buttons, compare their respective placements and notice which one catches your attention first.

taxjar landing page CTA
Source: Taxjar

Crisp And Actionable Content

Creating compelling content for your call to action scheme is one of the major deals to crack.

Why should clients behave the way you want them to and what is it that will catch their attention and persuade them enough to transform into potential customers for your market? Ask yourself these questions before coining the content and try to provide crisp and effective answers to them in through your call to action scheme.

Take into view the webpage of Netflix. The CTA Button is garnished with a crisp and affirming sentence, “Watch Anywhere. Cancel Anytime” which is a deal convincing enough, that one can’t help, but click on the CTA Button.

netflix landing page
Source: Netflix

Backdrop

Always remember,

Clients are taken into confidence not only by your call to action strategy but also the way in which everything else is presented to them. The appearance of the backdrop plays a major role here. Just like the main CTA, every other detail must catch equal attention and should be convincing enough that the client makes an action towards your call. While your CTA strategy must be able to create a sense of urgency in the mind of your clients, your backdrop must be designed in a way that depicts the benefits you provide to your customers and their adequate social proofs.

Try considering the following two examples to have a better understanding of the role backdrop plays in CTA Marketing. Compare the ease with which your eyes catch hold of the CTA buttons on two different web pages of Intelligentsia’s and Spotify’s website –

spotify landing page

Bottom-Line?

All these definitions, facts, guidelines and examples will help you in large proportions to draw the best out of your business and implement Call To Action Marketing in the most effective way. But you must keep exploring because there’s no key that fits all locks and no one staircase to success. Don’t lose the spirit and keep trying with the same efforts until the goal is reached because there is no one key that fits all locks. You must learn from mistakes and keep trying, testing and improvising your own work to reach the heights you have dreamt of.

Go On, Tell Us What You Think!

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