You’ve got your potential customer to read your blog post, visit your website, and maybe even click to open your email. Your marketing job is done, right? Not so fast. Now comes the hard part—the crucial time to tip the scales in the conversion process. You want your potential customer to take a specific action. The problem is, they may have no idea what you want them to do without some direction. This is where a call-to-action (CTA) button works its magic. Here are four tips to get your potential customer to click on that CTA button and take the action you want:
1. Copy matters.
There isn’t much real estate on your CTA button, so you need to make it count. Use action-oriented words, such as get, download, sign-up, schedule an appointment, and request a quote to get people to click on that button. You don’t want to be too vague, but verbosity has no place on a CTA button. It’s a delicate balance. Keep it brief, while simultaneously ensuring your potential lead knows exactly what action you want them to take. It’s also helpful to create a sense of urgency. Simple words like today or now have been proven to be effective.
2. Appearance counts.
The actual CTA button itself is also important. First, people need to recognize that it’s a clickable button. You want it to be substantial enough to stand out. It should be the largest button on the page, so visitors know it’s important, and be sure to use fonts that are easy to read. To make your button pop, contrast it with the page’s background, but don’t overdo it. Leave plenty of blank space around the button, or your message will get lost. Don’t be afraid to add some personality! You can get a little creative by adding rounded corners, drop shadows, or beveled edges, as long as visitors still know that they’re supposed to click it.
3. Location is important.
Where you place your CTA button is also crucial. Some insist your CTA should go above the fold, while others say below. Often, a CTA is put at the end of a blog post. To draw even more attention to it, you may want to add an arrow pointing to the CTA button. Again, there’s no method that’s 100% effective. Experiment to see what works best with your audience.
4. Don’t have too many competing CTAs.
It’s just fine to have more than one CTA button, but you don’t want to clutter your site and add confusion. Make sure that your most important CTA is the most prominent and understood by your audience to be important. There’s no perfect CTA button that will work in every instance. Some people have had success with a red button, while others will use only green; still others swear that yellow is the answer. HubSpot ran a test with red and green buttons and found that red outperformed green by 21%. Does that mean you should make all of your CTA buttons red? No. You need to test what works best for your products or services on your audience. Analyzing your CTA conversion results is important. You can find out what’s working by tweaking one small aspect of your button at a time. Try a different color or font, or change the copy on the button. See if that improves or hinders your results. With a little trial and error, you can come up with an effective CTA button. Then you’re free to work on converting those leads into bona fide customers!
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