5. Why CTA matters and how to create one that converts

Introduction

Imagine you're the Hero of your own story. You have a problem that needs solving, and you're seeking a solution. But like many heroes, you may be hesitant to act until you're compelled to do so. The same is true for your customer!

The Authentic Marketing Podcast provides a plan for an authentic approach to customer engagement that creates clarity within your sales and marketing, generating more leads and closing sales faster.

You need a  great call to action distinguishing the heroes who succeed from those who remain stuck. In this episode, Simon Harvey and Daniel Kleber will dive into the psychology behind the CTA and show you how to create a message that speaks directly to your customer's needs and desires. You'll learn to use language that creates a sense of urgency without being pushy.

Join us as we explore the importance of the CTA and how to create a compelling call to action that will drive conversions and turn your customers into loyal fans of your brand. With our guidance, you'll be equipped to lead your customers on a journey towards transformation and success.

To help you improve your marketing strategy, download the free brand script worksheet, which includes sections for each part of the storytelling framework we discuss in our episodes, here (or copy and paste the link below): 

demodia.com/brandscript-worksheet

---

Join marketing experts Simon Harvey and Daniel Kleber on Authentic Marketing, the biweekly podcast that provides proven marketing tips to improve your marketing efforts and help your business grow.

Subscribe to our biweekly episodes dropping Friday on your favourite podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other.

Book a consultation with our Authentic Engagement coaches to help you navigate through the jungle of the business world: demodia.com/sales-marketing-review

Demodia Instagram: instagram.com/demodia_digital

Demodia LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/demodia

Episode Transcript

A couple of episodes ago, we spoke about the one liner, the short paragraph that highlights a problem that your customer has and outlines the solution that you provide. Together, these help your customer, the hero, to transform and reach their desired result. As you know from experience though, the trouble with heroes, or indeed prospects, is that they never act until they're compelled to do so. We've already offered them a plan and now in today's episode, we're going to get to the most critical part. We need to call them to action. The call to action is where your customer commits and says yes to the support and advice that you're offering. So today we'll see what makes a good call to action and how to get the best impact from them within your emails, web pages and other content. Hello everyone and welcome to the Authentic Marketing Podcast in association with Demodia. I'm your host, Simon Harvey, and I'm joined by my co host, Daniel Klaber. Hi, Daniel.

Hi, Simon. Hello, listeners. Good to be here again.

Welcome again, Daniel. Good to have you back. So, I hear you're out with your girlfriend last night. I was hoping that was, uh, was good. How's that go?

Um, actually, it went pretty well, thanks. We went to the movies and had dinner afterwards.

All sounds very romantic. Sounds like things are going well then. Uh, did you, uh, get round to asking that big question that you were talking about?

No, not yet, but I'm planning to do so within the next couple of weeks. We plan to go to Paris for a weekend trip, and I plan to ask her on top of the

Eiffel Tower. Oh, that would be really nice. Yeah, I've been to Paris. I love it up there. Didn't quite get round to, uh, popping the question, but it's very romantic. I hope things go well for you, and I'm sure they will.

Thank you very much. I hope so too. It needed a lot of planning to organize this though.

You know what though, what you're experiencing is exactly like what a customer goes through when they're starting a journey with a new company. First they need to get to know you and understand if you're the right match. Then you can gradually progress further into the relationship. So it's exactly the same thing.

Yeah, that's true. Imagine approaching a girl for the first time and directly asking her to marry you.

I somehow don't think that you're going to get very far with that one. You're not going to get the answer that you're looking for. No. Just like with a relationship, when you start your story, you want to get to know each other a little bit first. You need to learn what's on offer, and you need to understand whether or not there's a good match. But just like in a real relationship, you don't want to leave it too long before you actually ask the question and ask the customer to make a decision. Otherwise, you're going to end up in that dreaded friend zone.

Oh no, the friend zone. Yeah, but that's so true. If you wait for too long, they will go and find someone who is ready to solve their problem today. Hope that this isn't true for my girlfriend at least.

I'm sure you'll be alright, heading in the right direction there. So, going back to our story though. So far we've invited them into our story, made it clear what the problem is that we solve, we've proposed a solution and we've given them a plan. Now it's time to push them a bit and ask them to make a buying decision. If you

don't push people to take action, they won't just make decisions on their own. The call to action is where you are asking them to make a decision. Do they want to move forward with you, or are they not interested?

Yeah, and many companies just don't have a strong call to action. And that's really why they're losing business, why people aren't converting on their website.

You need to give them guidance and it has to be very clear and very direct. It has to challenge them to do something. Some good examples are things like buy now, book a consultation, call now. These are clear and strong calls to action. On the other hand though, I often see websites using things like learn more or ask about this. These are definitely not good calls to action. They're passive and very vague. They don't define clearly what you are asking the customer to do.

And of course, when you define your call to action, it has to be everywhere. You might think that you're asking too many times, but I can guarantee you that you're not. So when people scan your website, they're highly likely to miss something that only appears once or twice. People want and expect a prominent call to action. If they have to look for it, they're going to give up. So think about this. How many times have you left the supermarket frustrated because you couldn't find where to pay? Why do

you ask that? Never. It's easy to find the checkout as it is always at the front of the store and has bigger signs all around it.

And that's precisely my point. Yeah, supermarkets and other physical stores make it easy for you to find the checkout as they want you custom. However, most websites don't follow those same principles. After each section in the site, you have to have a call to action so that visitors won't miss it. Once you've decided on your call to action, make it prominent and use it consistently throughout the site, your social media, your emails, and everywhere so that your customer always knows what's next. So many

companies don't have a call to action and are just losing business on a daily basis for this exact reason.

Yeah, and that's a real shame to see. So, let's help you out. Let's take a few minutes to take a closer look at how to build calls to action that will work. They'll work for your website, for your emails, part of videos, demonstrations, everywhere. So in today's episode, we've been looking at the call to action part of your story and brand script. This is the point that your prospects need to make a choice. Do they move forward and accept your offer and solution, or do they ignore the problem and carry on doing what they're doing at the moment? So Daniel, let's take a look. Let's start with the two different calls to action type. So there's direct and transitional calls to action. Where would we want to use either of those and maybe what are some good examples?

Alright, let's talk about the transitional call to action then. This is a perfect way to introduce yourself to new customers and build that trust without too much pressure.

Yeah, this is a great place to start. You got to remember that not everyone that visits your website or reads your emails will want to jump straight into bed with you. Some people need time and nurturing. The important thing about a transitional CTA is that it's the getting to know you phase of the relationship. So you need to offer something of interest and value to your prospective buyer in order for them to provide you their email address.

Yes, nobody will give their email address for a brochure about the business or datasheet of your services. Nope. They want something that's going to lead them toward the solution to their problem. Uh, tips and tricks document, some specific advice, a short training video, or something like that. These are all great ideas for lead

generators. That's exactly right. A few things that you can try with your audience might be a short educational email series that explains how to overcome one of their problems, perhaps a customer testimonial that talks about how others in the same industry are addressing that challenge, a demonstration of your product or something. Maybe, you know, this could be a video too. Often we find the promise of something that's more interactive can be a real enticement for people that actually wants to have a look and play for themselves. And then, of course, there's the trusty PDF. This comes in many forms, reports, workbooks, checklists, white papers, you know, and many, many more. The more important

thing with PDFs is that they need to offer value to your customer, help to solve their problem, give them advice, and position yourself as the guide. Some examples for titles might be, 5 tips for creating a website that converts. The three most common mistakes businesses make in LinkedIn marketing. Five simple things to do to get people to reply to your sales emails. You know your audience best, so choose something that genuinely helps them, and they will convert.

Yeah, that's absolutely right. Offer them real value, and only you know what that value is because you know your industry. The thing is, the trap I see many companies falling into that I just want to warn you about, though, is I see many people creating these great long white papers and e books, and the trouble is they really say nothing. Let me give you some examples. Um, a title of one that I saw recently was something like the truth about talent shortage. So even as an HR professional, I've got little clue as to what advice or benefit that I'm going to get by reading this publication. Uh, another one that I saw was called the definitive guide to brand to demand marketing. Sounds all very great and flash, but you know, I'm, I'm genuinely in the marketing industry. I've been here for years and I've got no clue exactly what that means or what to expect from it. So the trouble is that the jargon that they're using in there just doesn't make it clear. People don't know what to expect. The other thing to consider is length. Yes, there's undoubtedly value in a detailed document explaining every step to solving a specific problem. But as responsible marketers though, we've got to ask ourselves, when is enough? There's no point in spending dozens of hours and thousands of dollars writing and laying out this great long extensive white paper if actually what your prospects really care about. is just the short workbook that you've attached away in the appendix at the end.

There's some great ideas in there. The thing we haven't discussed yet is how best to incorporate transitional CTAs into your website or any other content. These need to stand out from your main page content, so create something visually colorful and eye catching. Then, Add that into the flow of your main content. Typically I would insert it after the plan section of your content, but as a rule of thumb, I would say it needs to be about two-thirds of the way through the page.

Yeah. You also mentioned in there making it eye-catching. I definitely agree with that, but one thing not to forget. is do not make it more about style than substance. You know, it's important that it's clear. So as well as maybe the short CTA text, you could include a few words that explain what your visitors going to get if they do take up your call. A good idea is to use something from the internal problem, maybe, or the transformation section of the brand script.

We've talked a lot now about the transitional call to action in the buying journey. This leads to a direct call to action. So let's take a look at this. The first thing I would say is that the direct call to action needs to be clear. And it needs to be found everywhere

on your website. Yes, I'd say it's worth spending a minute to look at the experience. So, I mentioned earlier, when you visit a physical store, you want to know where the checkout is. It's distinct, it's well signed, and in larger stores there's often many of them strategically positioned near to the exits and the stairways. You need to think about the positioning of your CTAs in a similar way. So firstly, come up with a standard button style that you're going to use consistently for all your direct calls to action. Then add it to multiple places within each page of your site. The most important place to put one of these CTAs is in the top right hand corner of every page. Put it there and put it clear. There's a lot of eye tracking and user experience, research studies that have shown that this is the place that people naturally expect to find things like checkouts and contact pages. buttons. It's where your eye goes first when you're scanning the page. You know, this is just like the main checkout by the store exit. The other thing I'd say is that you should include your CTA button between each of the main sections of your site. You might think it's appearing a lot, but in reality it's not. And also don't make people hunt for it. The CTA needs to be continually repeated. The worst thing that you can do is lose prospects because they can't connect with you.

So, how about the wording our listeners should use within their CTAs then?

I'd say the single most important thing about a CTA is that you need to be clear about what you want the prospect to do. So, some good examples of this might be order now, start your 14 day trial, schedule an appointment, maybe register today, maybe book a demo or something like that. I want you to think about the action that you want people to take and state it clearly. Things like learn more don't work, they're not clear. So don't be lazy and take a few moments to come up with something that's clear to your visitor and I guarantee you it's going to get you much better results. The other thing I'd say is that you shouldn't overload your visitors with dozens of different CTAs. As a rule, keep it to just the two that we've discussed. If you add various different CTAs through your page, people are going to get paralysed by choice. It's a well known phenomena that the more choices that people have, the less likely they are to make a decision. Those are a couple of

great suggestions that make complete sense. So you've talked a lot about CTAs and webpages, but how else can these be used and where else should our listeners be putting their CTAs in order to get the best results?

I'd say that they can and probably should be used in all your communications. The obvious place I think for many people is within emails. In this case, I would usually only recommend a single CTA within one message just to keep things clear, but also don't forget to include that same CTA in several places throughout the content of your email. For example, it's really effective to put a button towards the top of your message as well as at the bottom as people often don't read all the way through your emails. Another place you should include your CTAs is in your lead magnets, or at the end of your videos, or even, uh, the back of a business card. People might not always have the option to click on these as well, so make sure that you also include an obvious URL that people can go to, or even better these days, put a QR code or something there. You know, these really seem to be having a renaissance at the moment and they're proving really effective. Of course, the other place that we haven't mentioned yet that you don't want to forget is in your social posts.

And of course, if you're linking from somewhere outside your website, then make sure it leads to a landing page built around your brand script in order to keep consistency and stand the best chance of capturing the lead. Thanks, Simon. I think that is all great advice.

And thank you to you too, Daniel. As always, there were some great points in there. Many of them seem obvious, but you'll be amazed how many websites that I've visited that either have no obvious call to action or ten different ones on the homepage. So if you're having problems finding the right CTA to your website or emails, or if you need someone to create story based copy for your website, then you can hire an authentic engagement coach. Just go to Demodia. com to hire a coach that will show you how to increase the effectiveness of your marketing and find an easier way to grow your business. So listeners, at the end of each episode, I like to give you a set of concrete actions. These are practical steps from today's episode that you can take to immediately improve the effectiveness of your sales and marketing communications. In our conversation today, we talked about calls to action and how important they are within your emails, presentations, and website. So, today's action is simple. I want you to go to your website homepage and make sure it has two, and only two, calls to action. So you should have a direct CTA that links to something like a trial activation form or a book a meeting form. I want you to make sure this is in the top right hand corner of your page and make sure it's repeated several times throughout the copy within your page. Then I want you to add a transitional or secondary CTA. This should take people through to a form that provides them with a lead magnet, including something that's got value. This is going to get them started on their journey with you. So I want you to make sure that they're both there and make sure that they're clear. That's it. As simple as that this week. With those two simple calls to action, you'll see a significant impact on the number of leads you generate through your site. So that's all for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Authentic Marketing Podcast, where we help you to create a sales and marketing plan. That will get you new customers and grow your business. Follow us and rate us wherever you listen to your podcasts. And don't forget to join us on LinkedIn. We love to hear what you want to know and how we're helping your business succeed. See you next time.