Optimizing Your Call-to-Action

The key ingredient in every marketing plan is its call to action. If you don’t ask for the sale, the answer will always be NO. In postcard and email campaigns, you’re limited in scope to a very small space in which to reinforce interest and tip prospects over the edge to buy. So what makes for an effective call to action?

WHAT COMPRISES A COMPELLING CALL TO ACTION?
When my wife and I were writing the business plan for our Salon, she told me our success depended heavily on location. In fact, she repeated location, location, location over and over. Why? In the hair styling industry, you need a constant flow of walk-in traffic to augment your existing clientele, if you want to maximize your growth. It’s not much different cross-industry.

DO YOU USE MORE THAN ONE CALL TO ACTION?
Is just one call to action enough? Strategists reason by giving multiple calls to the same action, in different sections of your broadcast, you lend weight to the call. The first call to action may be intriguing, prompting your prospect to read further (benefits/solutions), followed by second call-to-action that puts them over the top. If you change the wording or offer different solutions in multiple calls-to-action, you risk confusing your viewers. A confused prospect never buys!

SALES ARE EMOTIONAL TRANSACTIONS
Setting the right tone puts your prospect in a buying posture. Using power words that demonstrate force (in your face) and personality make a strong impact. You’re looking to prompt specific reactions from their point of view. And it isn’t just the words, rather it’s their perception of the words. What’s more appealing to you (on the same product)? 20% off or $ 150 off? My guess would be $ 150 off. Why? Because 20% is an unknown quantity. It sounds good, but requires some calculation. I understand $150 off immediately.

TEXT OR IMAGES?
The goal is to draw attention to your call-to-action. Extensive testing has shown that what works for some doesn’t work for everyone . Changing up between text and images works better than locking into one or the other.

SIZE AND COLOR MATTERS
In testing, it’s been surmised that bright colors outperform other colors, and orange in particular, does very well. I’ve seen a lot of red calls-to-action, but subconsciously, red means STOP. A good test to determine if your call-to-action is the proper size and color is to stand about 10 feet away from your ad and see how easy it is to pick out.

Your thoughts ...

Compelling your audience to take action is vital for generating leads and converting them to your customer. We (small/medium companies) often need more than one call to action for final conversion. First We show our product through text, images, and videos, and then we need another click to bring them to our landing page/order page. In my case, I need to explain my product first to make my customers understand. Many new hosting providers are not aware of the use of my product for their company. We can assume Payment is the final action of conversion.