Call-to-actions, or CTAs, are the attention-grabbing phrases that seal the deal at the end of most forms and advertisements that you see. It’s the ultimate hook that gets people to sign up for the products that you’re selling.
Without a commanding CTA, you might not get as many conversions as you would if you were to optimize your advertisements with this piece of content.
We’ll give you 9 stellar examples of irresistible CTA practices that will get your advertisement noticed immediately:
1. Keep It Brief
Brevity is key when it comes to producing attention-grabbing content. We suggest that you stick with four words or less in your CTA. More than four words is oftentimes unnecessary and can actually deter visitors from wanting to engage with your materials.
Rather than overwhelming your visitors with a verbose CTA, use strong verbs and time-sensitive trigger words to convince your visitors to sign up. Keep reading for more detailed examples!
2. Use Strong Verbs
If you can imagine, tone matters a lot when you’re crafting these sales-focused CTAs. That’s why it’s important to implement strong, action-oriented words that evoke a sense of urgency within the reader.
Rather than writing, “Newsletter,” or “Subscribe,” as your call-to-action, use more convincing phrases, such as, “Sign up Today!” or “Don’t Miss Out!”.
The general tone of your CTA should be motivating and urgent all-around. If a CTA doesn’t command a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out), then it will most likely be ineffective. Your word choice will make the difference between a confident conversion and an apathetic shrug.
3. Incentives are Welcomed
If possible, always try to give an incentive with your pitch. As confident as your 3-4 words might be, the overall strength of your advertisement will increase if you incentivize people to sign up for your cause.
One of the biggest mistakes that new marketers make is assuming that the audience is willing to take an extra step to participate in the campaign. One should never assume that the target audience is already on the same side. If anything, assume the opposite: that this is the most difficult group of people to convince.
With that in mind, you’ll have to be creative in order to create a desire that is, assumingly, not already there. Convince them with an immediate gratification of sorts. For example, if your goal is to expand your email list, give out an e-book or online guide as a free gift upon signing up.
4. Tempt with Convenience
Like we briefly mentioned earlier, the most convincing CTAs are concise, confident, and convenient. Never underestimate the power of convenience. Take, for example, a CTA button that says, “Sign up Today!” versus one that comes with an accompanying blurb beneath, which states, “It takes less than a minute to complete!”
This extra piece of information affirms your lead that the signup process has been designed for their convenience, which makes the overall offer seem that much more enticing. As a marketer, your customer’s convenience should come first in every campaign optimization that you make.
5. Be Intentional with Placement
Where you place your CTA is almost as important as the actual text itself because it determines whether or not your audience will spot the CTA. If you website contains images, use them to strategically direct your users toward the ultimate call-to-action.
For example, if you have an image of a person to the right of your home page, choose an image where the person looks to the left, where you can strategically place your online form and CTA.
According to this case study, the most frequented area on a web page is above the fold but away from the scroll. Feel free to experiment with different placements to see which fold works best for you.
6. Use Contrasting Colors
Simply put, your CTA should stand out from the rest of your page while still maintaining the general color scheme of your overall design. The high contrast of your CTA button will emphasize its importance and authority level in your design hierarchy.
When it comes to design, intentionality is everything. If you don’t distinguish your CTA from the rest of your content, most visitors won’t go out of their way to find it. They will likely skip right over it and not bat an eye. Utilize your contrasting colors to bring attention to your CTA and watch as the conversions begin to increase.
7. Don’t Be Afraid of White Space
The white space in design is almost like silence in a conversation. Many people fear it might be boring or awkward, so they fill the silence with random chatter any chance they get.
Yet, this unintentional noise ends up overwhelming the conversation, taking away from the points that matter rather than contributing to it. The same thing happens to design. The busier your landing page appears, the more distracting it will be for visitors to sign up for your product or service.
Don’t be afraid of white space; instead, use it to your advantage. Create a sleek design with white space to make your CTA stand out more.
8. Size Matters
As a general rule of thumb, your CTA should stand out the most among the rest of your webpage content. In addition to experimenting with your CTA placement, you should also pay special attention to its font and button sizing.
Bigger is better in this case because you want your CTA to be able to pass the squint test; that is, if you squint your eyes, you should still be able to spot the CTA clearly on the webpage.
9. Conduct A/B Testing
Finally, conduct plenty of A/B tests with your various CTA optimizations! All of these tips need to be tested and refined because there are so many factors that go into each one. Something that might work for your competitors might not work well for you.
Try switching up your colors, text size, CTA placement, and everything else that we’ve mentioned. You’ll never know which combination of these optimizations might just strike gold for you.
Bonus Tip
Since the CTA plays such a critical role in your overall conversion rates, it’s important that you track your progress with a trustworthy tracking software (we offer some at Phonexa). You need to be able to see the entire customer journey in order to make data-driven changes to your content.
Using an online tracking tool can help you stay on top of your split test results and more. With these tips at hand, we have no doubt that your CTAs will be as irresistible as ever.
Say goodbye forever to bad design and hello to irresistible content!