Call to Action is Key in Digital Marketing: CTA Tips
Be Specific
Avoid generic calls to action like 'for more information' or 'to speak to a representative'. You want to build on the information you've already given a potential customer and hold on to the interest generated by your copy. People who are already engaged with a product are likely to follow through on a call to action if it's presented compellingly. A clear and concrete call to action can even add to the details you've already shared with the reader. Here are a few examples:- Click here to see the newest models.
- Take advantage of our current sale.
- Learn about popular upgrades.
Enhance Your Call to Action with Graphics
Today's digital customers are used to colorful graphics that grab the attention and add information to the pitch. A Buy Now button is a common graphic that can be highlighted with bold color and prominent placement. An added touch is coordinating graphic elements with the company logo and color scheme. This beckons a potential customer to make a purchase and drives home your branding elements at the same time.Be Friendly
Avoid hackneyed calls to action like the ones mentioned above, and use a CTA that speaks to the reader as if they were a neighbor or casual friend:- See how it can work for you.
- Start enjoying yours today.
- Experience what thousands have discovered.
Create Trust
Similar to social proof, the use of words like guaranteed and free trial help put to rest any reservations a potential buyer may have about the product. Short customer reviews are another valuable (and more direct) way to generate confidence in the product. And if you're using a graphic button to catch the reader's interest, the space next to it is the perfect location for a short list of benefits and/or guarantees. Your CTA should speak directly to the reader as an individual with phrases such as:- Find the best option for your needs.
- Choose the model that works for you.
- Let us help you find the perfect solution.
CTA Placement
In many cases, a call to action works best at the end of the text. After the prospective buyer has learned the highlights about your product, including the benefits, a CTA can tip them in the direction of acting on that information. Sometimes, though, a CTA is better placed front and center. In a photo advertisement, a Buy Now button that stands out gives an extra nudge to someone who's already tempted to purchase.Product Alignment
The call to action should also fit with the theme of the service or product advertised. Offering something of value related to the product is one way to draw readers to your website, but it should be a good fit for your product. The interest in what you're selling and what you're offering as incentive should be aligned if you want to hold the customer's attention. A video, list of tips or free e-book are typical giveaways to help funnel clients to your page, increasing the chance of a conversion.Test and Re-test
A call to action can provide measurable metrics if you test different versions in your marketing campaign. Try two similar CTAs with different keywords to see which ones are the most effective at drawing traffic to your website. Measure which free offers or testimonials have the most impact. Tracking which copy leads to the most conversions will help you tweak your CTA for optimal results.Related reading: why online reviews should be a key part of your digital marketing strategy.
Click-through rate lies to you. Track this instead
Most people measure a call to action by how many people click it. That number feels good on a dashboard and it means almost nothing on its own. A CTA that gets clicked a lot but sends unqualified traffic into a form that never converts isn't working, it's just noisy. The metric that tells you whether a CTA is doing its job is the conversion rate from click to completed goal, not the click itself.
Say a business runs two versions of a "Get a free quote" button. Version A gets a 9% click rate. Version B gets 4%. On paper A wins. But if only 2% of A's clickers ever fill in the form, while 30% of B's do, B is the better CTA by a mile. It's attracting fewer but more intent-matched people. This is the trap most CTA testing falls into: optimising for the top of the funnel metric because it's the easiest one to see, while ignoring what happens after the click.
What you want is a chain of numbers, not one number:
- Click rate on the CTA itself, as a baseline sanity check
- Completion rate of whatever the CTA leads to (form, checkout, booking, download confirmation)
- Quality of what comes out the other end, meaning did that lead turn into a sales conversation, a customer, revenue
- Time lag between click and conversion, because a CTA that converts slowly needs different follow-up than one that converts instantly
Without that third point, you can optimise a CTA into oblivion and still lose money. A CTA that pulls in low-intent traffic who complete a form but never buy is worse for the business than one with a lower click rate and higher close rate downstream. This is why marketing and sales need to be looking at the same numbers. If sales can't tell you what happened to the leads a CTA generated, you're flying blind no matter how clean your click data looks.
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Sample size is the other thing people get wrong. Testing a CTA for three days with 200 visitors and declaring a winner is guesswork dressed up as data. You need enough volume to reach statistical confidence, and for most small and mid sized sites that means running a test for weeks, not days, and resisting the urge to call it early because one version pulled ahead on day two.
Segment the data too. A CTA that performs brilliantly for organic traffic can flop for paid traffic, because the intent and awareness level going in is different. Blending everything into one average conversion rate hides that and leads to decisions that help one channel while quietly hurting another.
