Call-to-Action 101 – How To Create a Successful CTA in 2023?

Marketing is all about making things easier for your customers. A call-to-action is one of those things. It helps you to advance your marketing efforts with just one, yet effective, click and ultimately turn a potential lead into a loyal customer.

One of the most tedious tasks in marketing, in general, is converting a potential lead into a loyal customer. This is also true with B2B clients. 

The attention span of people is very narrow, and taking advantage of that window can be tricker. 

Yes, there are a lot of marketing techniques that can be used, but it is necessary to understand that some may work as intended, and some may not.

When you create a marketing plan or strategy, it is absolute that you need to have a specific goal in your mind, and “way(s)” to achieve that goal. 

One of the main goals here is to get your potential customer to do an action regarding your business. 

This action can be anything, ranging from downloading paperbacks or even signing up for a newsletter. 

As said, these can be quite challenging since the attention of your potential customers can be narrow and very limited.

This is what the article deals with. In this block, we will discuss the elements that need to be included in an effective CTA (call-to-action) in your marketing email.

Table of Contents

1. Call-to-Action – What Is It?
2. Why Are CTAs Important?
3. 6 Benefits of a Proper Call-to-Action
4. Can CTA Cause a Bad Impact on Your Business?
5. How To Create an Effective CTA in 5 Steps
6. FAQs
7. Final Thoughts

Call-to-Action – What Is It?

Call-to-action, or CTA, is a business asking the potential lead or even the existing customer to perform specific actions (related to what type of call-to-action is included in your email) that have an impact on your business. 

A CTA can be anything, it can be a short sentence or even infographics that intrigues the customer to take an action. Also, it can be set in different forms, such as on your website, your marketing email, or even in your blog.

Essentially CTA is a “tool” that helps your potential customers to take the next step to become a loyal customers to your brand. 

Usually, a CTA can be in the form of clickable links embedded in different media, such as a website or email. 

Oftentimes, you can identify the CTA in the content. Thanks to the different layouts, you can easily find the CTA in the email.

Why Are CTAs Important?

One thing to clarify is that CTA is not only for your customer but also for your client, aka, other businesses known as B2B – Business to Business.

Good CTAs act as a guide for your customer to take the necessary next steps in their buying journey. A good and strategic CTA is a tool for you as a business owner to build trust and a loyal relationship with your customer.

You may imagine, the potential lead may not be aware of your business, as much as some existing customers. In those situations, handholding is needed. That is where CTAs come into the picture. 

Without a proper CTA, a potential lead may be unsure of what steps to take toward your business, and as a result, there is a high probability that the potential lead may abandon the website and look at your competitors. 

In one sentence, a CTA is a way for your potential lead to engage with your brand and keep in the loop to know what is happening in your business.

6 Benefits of a Proper Call-to-Action

A proper CTA can get you the following benefits for your business:

1. Gives the ability to take necessary action toward your business. Helps to build trust between your business and your customers.
2. Provides a good opportunity to build a customer base and widen it. This can be done with the help of social media. Collect more social media followers by including the CTA in your social media posts.
3. Gives purpose to your marketing, rather than blindly trying to get a lead.
4. Provides a great opportunity to follow through on the promise of your business to your customer during their journey with your business.
5. It helps to get business. Meaning it helps to gain more leads or potential customers, and thus more sales to your business. 
6. Helps to frequently engage your customer with your brand. Here also, social media plays a big role. Strategically posting content with CTA can help your followers to keep in touch with your brand often.

Can CTA Cause a Bad Impact on Your Business?

Yes, a bad CTA can badly impact your business. For example, if your CTA revolves around only sales, this can definitely irritate your potential customers, lose their trust in your brand and ultimately they might even leave your business. 

This is bad for your business. Similar to this scenario, there are scenarios where your CTA can drive your potential leads away from your business. 

So, how should you tackle this scenario? How to create an effective CTA is the only thing you should wonder about every time you are making a marketing campaign for your business.

How To Create an Effective CTA in 5 Steps

As mentioned above, you should have a goal for your CTA. So, your CTA should be interesting and intriguing at the same time which makes customers want to learn more about your business.

1. Understand Your Customer Base

Now the first step is to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. Understand their pain points, and check how your business or service can help them to overcome their problems. If you don’t know where to start, put a series of questions together, like the following:

1. How does your customer’s mind work?
2. What is their buying pattern?
3. What kind of promotions do they prefer or expect from your business niche?
4. What are their pain points?
5. How can you solve those pain points? By white-paper documentation or with an e-book?

Understanding your customer is the first step in any business. This helps to get a goal for your CTA and even helps to design the CTA that can produce your desired results. 

2. Always Choose High-Quality with a Low-Risk Factor

Imagine this scenario, you are an eCommerce business and looking for a sale. You create a CTA with the product with high risk, meaning an expensive product, and embedded this CTA in your marketing emails and newsletters. 

The probability of getting a sale through that CTA is very slim, or it might even be safe to say that there may be no sale through that CTA. 

Now, the smart thing to do here is to create a CTA, which has low-risk factors and high-quality solutions, such as low-price, yet high-quality products that can drive more sales to your business.

Always ensure that your CTA is not a commitment. This gives trust to your customers and does not make them feel pressured to make decisions. 

3. Use Action Words

Always structure your CTA in such a way that it creates an urgency, yet ensures that it does not give pressure on your customer. For example, a time-sensitive deal can create a sense of urgency, and also entice your customers to take action. 

Action words, such as “claim now” or even “limited-time offer” can drive more sales than the “buy now” CTA

4. Use Different Designs

A CTA is to be looked at by the customer, even if they skip your content. Camouflaging with your regular content may not get the result that you are expecting. Make it distinguishable. Use different fonts or even designs.

Nowadays, most CTAs have a button layout. You can try to incorporate those design elements. Even better, use infographics to tell a short yet crips motive of the CTA. Try to include the current trend elements, such as memes or even emojis.

More unique CTAs have a greater chance of getting noticed, or even driving a sale, than normal, generic call-to-actions.

5. Experiment, Experiment,  Experiment

The first step is to understand the customer. This can be quite challenging. At first, it can be tedious to get a grasp of your customer’s thoughts. Experiment with your CTAs, it can be anything, such as design, words, phrases, and the function that needs to be embedded into your CTA. You can even use the goals of your CTA.

One of the best ways to get an idea about your customer’s preference is by implementing A/B testing. Two different types of information to your customers and analyze which one has more engagement. Then try to implement that design to your CTA as the final design. 

Similarly, there are experiments that you can do to get a better understanding of your customer’s needs. Send surveys often to your customer to see what they are expecting from your brand. 

This experiment gives valuable data about your customers. Understand these data and then structure your CTA. That CTA can drive more leads, and sales and solves your customer pain points. 

Suggested Reads:

1. Outbound Lead Generation Strategies – 10 Tips
2. Target Audience Profiling – A Quick and Easy Guide in 2023

FAQs

Final Thoughts

A call-to-action can be a small aspect of a digital marketing strategy, but the result that it can bring can be substantial. Having a proper and strategic CTA can bring more business in a short amount of time. Unique CTA can be difficult and sometimes you may not know where to start and that is what this article tries to solve. Having a good understanding of your customer base and repetitive experimenting, you are bound to get the best possible response for your CTA in no time!

We, at Appointments.co strive to provide the best result for clients in a short amount of time. We specialize in identifying the ideal customer profile and delivering high-quality results. Check out our website, or talk to us now to bring your business to the next level!

Illustration – Storyset