Building an Effective CTA
September 8, 2017
Shop for the best deals on shoes! Free shipping on all orders! Save Time & Money! Like many consumers, you’ve probably seen and heard all of these popular call-to-actions (CTA) once before. Whether you’re window shopping or searching for great deals on the web, you might have wondered what goes into capturing the attention of consumers and how you can unlock these insights for your business.
Call-to-actions (CTAs) are popular taglines companies use to direct consumers to visit their website or business. By far, the most popular forms are through paid search ads and other digital mediums. Every day companies just like yours spend millions of dollars to skillfully tailor their marketing messages to reach their target market.
Through writing CTAs, companies are able to cut through cluttered SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) and capture the attention of consumers across multiple industries. To give you an overview of how you can write your own effective CTAs, we’ve put together our best tips and tricks every company should use.
Directing Traffic
The first thing you need to keep in mind when writing a CTA is the overall purpose. CTAs for paid ads, blogs, and other mediums are used to direct web users to a landing page or specific area on your website. With this in mind, you need to write your CTA around guiding these users to an associated page.
Using language like “For more information, click here”, “For the hottest deals on summer apparel, visit our site” are great ways to get users thinking about the next step of the process and increases the likelihood of conversion. Adjusting your message with the goal of directing web users to a related page on your website is the first step in writing a strong CTA.
Strong Hook
The key to writing a strong CTA is effective language. When writing content for ads and other media, you need to carefully balance passive and active voice. For CTAs in particular, you should focus on writing with present tense verbs related to your product, service, or industry.
Strong action verbs like “Save”, “Shop”, and “Buy” are common buzz words that ecommerce sites use in paid ads. Depending on your business, you will need to adjust your message to best meet your audience. For example, if you offer exceptional services to your clients you may want to highlight your strengths or mention your portfolio of clients.
Creating a strong hook that captures readers attention and makes them want to learn more is essential to standing out in the crowd. If you can give your readers just enough information to understand your message and make them curious for more, you’ll be well on your way to increasing traffic and leads for your business.
Short & Sweet
The best CTAs deliver powerful messages in a concise format. Depending on your medium (PPC Ads or other) the amount of characters you are allowed is limited. For Google Search ads for example, your description is limited in the amount of characters displayed. Writing a full paragraph about the strengths of your business will not be practical.
As a general rule of thumb, CTAs should be at most a sentence or two. In this text you should include strong keywords related to the page you are directing users to. This description should concisely and accurately describe the page and draw visitors in.
As a rule of caution, for SEO purposes, you should refrain from simply filling your CTA with heavy keywords. While there are currently no significant penalties to Ad ranking, having a CTA with all keywords in the text may be difficult to understand for some users. This disconnect may lead to users losing interest in the ad altogether.
Social Media & Blogs
Paid search and display ads aren’t the only mediums that need strong CTAs. Social media posts and blogs also benefit from users being directed to a specific page or related content. Take Facebook for example, many companies understand the value in owning and maintaining a page.
When posting content related to product updates, sales, and other news most companies simply share the information and leave users at a dead end. Without any links to follow or CTAs guiding them to a website, many customers commonly read the post and move on.
With a guiding CTA and link to a page on your website, you can turn casual Facebook users into valuable web traffic. By leading users from social media accounts or blog posts to pages on your website, you can initiate site browsing. If the content in the post or blog is engaging enough, users may be inclined to fill out a contact form or purchase products through your website.
Ultimately, these CTAs will be based on your business and industry. If leveraged successfully, they can boost traffic and hopefully improve brand awareness and sales overall.
An effective CTA can act as a powerful guide in directing web traffic to your business’ website. If used correctly, it can help build web traffic overall and improve both your SEO and brand awareness.
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