During a recent client meeting, we revisited the importance of a call to action (CTA) on the marketing material we produce for them.  This seemingly simple activity is often overlooked as is too obvious – we expect our prospects to know they should take action when viewing our material.  However, without it, people often do not think to take the next action – contacting you about a potential purchase.  Your call to action is critical as it will convert leads to sales.

Your marketing material should be informative, accurate, unbiased and distributed regularly to your customers and prospects.  It must always include a call to action, or several, no matter which channel your information is advertised on.  The call to action is a simple way to engage with your audience.  Whilst this may seem obvious and simple to do, you need to consider if your call to action is going to work.  Are people going to do the next thing you want them to?  Simply listing your contact details on an email or web page is not a call to action.

In the B2C market, a ?buy it now? command is a simple and effective way to ask your prospects to engage with you at the most direct level.  For the B2B sector however, it?s not often as simple as that.  For each of your marketing activities you need to decide what you want the next action for your audience is, there are different ones to consider.

Here are a few rules for effective calls to action:

–          Clarify the next step – what are you asking them to do, it needs to be blatant.

–          Make the CTA stand out – use colour, fonts.  Consider brand-appropriate colours or a recognizable custom icon.

–          Positioning – in terms of a web page, research has shown that the top right hand corner of the page is where CTAs perform most effectively.

–          Make it obvious.  Position the CTA relative to the content, and make sure it stands out from the clutter.  Remember people scan information, they are looking for the ?what?s in it for me? – guide them to this.

–          Keep it simple, ie user friendly.  A simple path from start to finish when completing the action is vital.

–          Does the result of the CTA fit with your business objectives?  Do you have a number of leads via your CTAs that will never convert into leads as they are never going to buy your services?

And some CTA ideas:  Every CTA must include the benefit of acting on it.

–          Offer interactive content – a white paper or e-book, via an email to you which ?gives the latest guidance on legislation changes?.

–          Promote a special offer one-off price offer.

–          Newsletter sign-up option to ?stay up to date with industry news?.

–          Social media feed – option to follow you on LinkedIn, Twitter ?for regular industry tips?.

–          Prioritise your CTA?s in accordance to your business objectives.  Are you offering white papers merely because your competitors do, or do you genuinely want to offer them to build relationships with their readers?

–          Ask people to comment about your blog content – start a conversation, offer the prospect of more information if they ask you directly for it.

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