Writing Effective Call to Actions

Boost conversions with carefully selected words

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Every piece of marketing you produce should have a call to action (CTA). The aim is to produce an immediate response – whether it’s to prompt a sale or encourage further engagement.

A good CTA will give meaning to your content and help your audience make a decision.

So how do you do this successfully? Here are my five key tips…

Use Verbs

As their name describes CTAs are indeed calling people to take action so we must use phrases that actually do this. Think about it – what’s more enticing – ‘our new product is available’ or ‘try our new product today’?

The second phrase will always perform better as it’s clearly telling people to do something. Check out Hootsuite’s examples of good verbs to use.

Emphasise Value

People need to know what’s in it for them before taking action. They are looking for solutions to their problems, so you need to emphasise the value you will offer over anyone else.

If you want people to subscribe to your newsletter, instead of saying ‘Sign Up Now’ try ‘Register for Free Insights’. If booking an appointment is your goal, use ‘Discover How We Can Help You’ rather than ‘Book Now’.

Create Urgency

Creating a sense of urgency to take action will increase your engagement, bookings and sales. We all know FOMO (fear of missing out) is real! Time-limited offers and limited opportunities are a great way to do this – for your CTAs think ‘40% off today only – get yours now’ or ‘10 slots available – secure your place today’.

Be mindful of your specialty though – time-limited offers and special deals are not advisable for certain services in which people should not be pressurised into making a decision quickly. Medical aesthetic procedures are a prime example.

Provoke Emotion

Connecting with your audience on an emotional level can reap rewards. As well as demonstrating how you have the answer to their problems, indicate how you are the best person to help.

Adjectives and personalisation can really help with this. For example, ‘Find Your Dream Home with Us’ sounds a lot more alluring than ‘Search for a House Today’.

Grab Attention

Make your CTA stand out against the rest of your text, so people understand exactly what it is you want them to do.

If it’s in an image, use a bold colour and put it inside a shape to grab attention. CTAs on your website homepage benefit from being set up as ‘buttons’ in clear boxes in a colour that stands out. For social media, you can use different fonts, capitalise the text and use emojis either side.

It’s beneficial to keep your CTAs short and sweet, and test different options to learn what works best for your audience.

Don’t know where to start? Message me – I’ll help boost your conversions with effective CTAs!