Lead generation is the best when the user finds us, converts, becomes a customer, and is satisfied. But how often does that happen? Users these days are smart and won’t give in for nothing. You need to tell them about the benefits that they will have if they connect with you.
Obviously, CTA isn’t a plain mechanism. Innovative ideas go into designing an effective CTA which actually converts.
This is what makes CTA marketing tricky at times. You can’t be too sure of something working out or not working out. What you can do is learn from other marketers’ experiences, observe and analyze and finally implement with a plan.
But how to be sure about making it work? Well, if you design your CTA keeping a few factors strictly in mind, your CTA will be really effective. These factors can be considered as the 5 Thumb Rules for creating an effective CTA.
Read below to find out what these Thumb rules are.
4 Thumb Rules for creating an effective CTA
Emails with a single call-to-action increased clicks 371% and sales 1617%. No doubt, CTAs can be very effective for lead generation, which in-turn drives the money in.
But also CTAs are tricky. While knowing user interest and intent can give you all kind of tough times, these 4 Thumb Rules for creating an Effective CTA will guide your marketing campaign in the right direction.
1. Be beneficial and tempting
How many times do you remember yourself not signing up for something that you really wanted? How often do you really ignore a sign up button that promises to entertain your interest?
You may think to find something out, the truth is it doesn’t happen often.
CTA buttons are meant to be like that. The text, the design, background image and the colour scheme, all of it is meant to tempt the viewer. Oh, did I just state the obvious?
The point here is, how can you make your CTA tempting like that? For a better understanding of the text in CTA, let us look at a few CTA copy examples below.
- Continue
- Submit
- Enter
- Download
- Request
- Click here
The examples above might appear neat and simple. Reason is they actually are neat and simple. What these examples don’t fulfill is the need to be tempting.
It seems like the CTA is asking the users to take action. A CTA is meant to make the user take action. If your CTA simply asks the user to take action with a copy like Continue, Submit or Enter, chances are, it will not work.
So, what you can do is be a little creative and offer the users something which would interest them. For example, take a look at some effective CTA copies below.
- Watch Right Now
- Join Free for a month (Netflix)
- Give me More
- Get my EBook
- Sign up for Free
Looking at both the lists of CTA copies, you can easily understand the difference. In the first list the user is being asked to take action, while in the second list the user is being offered benefits of his/her interest. This is what makes the examples in second list more tempting than those in the first one.
That is the way you should write a CTA copy.
2. Be easily found
There can be times when your CTA has a great design, and the copy is tempting and just on point. You might still not be able to generate enough leads. The reason can be an element of complexity which might be present on your page.
This complexity might leave the user wondering about what to do next. This can be a reason for the users not being able to Sign up even when they want to. Wouldn’t that be a shame?
The whole idea of CTA is to tempt the users so they connect with you. You can’t achieve that with complexity. Don’t make your users work up their brains trying to find out what to do. A perfect Call-to-Action will always be there at the right place and the right time.
For example, if a user is reading a blog post about “How to become a better manager”, the CTA suggesting more free tips for being a better manager should be there either in the middle or just after the end of that blog post.
You make the user try to find your CTA and guess what? You lose it!
3. Standout from the rest of the page
Apart from placing your CTA at the right place, it is very important to make it catch more eyes. Obviously, you can’t make it look tacky and you shouldn’t even attempt to, playing with size and colours can help.
For a further understanding of how you can tweak your CTA button, read the 3 design factors of a CTA.
- Size
A CTA button has to have a size which is not too big and not too small. A CTA banner or button which is too big in size might cause banner blindness on the page. Such pages usually have high bounce rates.
A good CTA button will be big enough to be read out easily and small enough to load completely on a mobile phone screen. In 2018, 52.2 percent of the total web traffic worldwide was generated through mobile phones. That is why smartphone accessibility of your webpage or email containing CTA should be considered while creating a CTA.
- Colour Scheme
Choosing the right colour scheme for your CTA is again very important as that is what will catch your users’ attention. If you aim at creating a contrast using such colours in your CTA that can be achieved.
Generally when you are deciding the right colour for your CTA, you can take a look at your website or landing page’s colour scheme. Netflix in their CTA use the same colour as that of their logo. This has helped them generate more subscriptions for sure.
- Background Image
Last but not the least at all, background image plays a vital role in making a CTA effective. A CTA without the right background is nothing but a button with text. It has near to no value. Adding an appropriate background image will always bring the landing page and the CTA to life.
Square uses a background image which shows how simple their product is to use. It shows a lady using their credit card. The simple smiles on the user’s face in the image promote the idea of simplicity and accessibility. What else would a user want?
And that was just one such example. Many brands have used such effective background images, along with their CTA buttons. This is a great way of boosting lead generation.
At times, depending on your offer and product, you might not even need to use an image. A solid colour background too can work. It’s just that whatever background you use, should make sense and promote the idea that using your product will ease down difficulties.
4. Keep experimenting
The rules mentioned above are just rules. Implementing these while designing your CTA will obviously help your campaign, there will always be scope for improvements.
You can always try varying your copy, secondary text, headline, page title, background image or anything else that you feel might suit your purpose. The idea is to keep trying. This is how you will get to learn all about your traffic’s intent and interest.
It is important to keep observing and keep experimenting.
Final words
CTA is an important part of any online business. If you are running a website and it lacks CTA, you should get it ready at the earliest.
Being sure about the success or failure of a CTA marketing campaign isn’t always possible, learning from other marketers and implementing your ideas in the right way keeping the thumb rules in mind will always help your purpose.