Brand & Capture

Driving quality traffic to your site is a challenge in itself, so it is important to have strong calls to action (CTA) on every page of your site once you get visitors there. CTAs have two purposes: grab attention and encourage an action. In previous posts I shared best practices for CTA design and tips for creating effective copy; here we will focus on the final piece of the puzzle—CTA placement.

The goal of a call to action (CTA) is to capture the attention of your visitors and convince them to take a particular action. When developing a CTA, there are three important factors to consider: copy, design and placement. Start by developing great CTA copy. (Check out my last blog for my top tips for creating effective call-to-action copy!) Here, we will discuss successful design, and stay tuned for a future post on placement best practices.

Since August, The Brand & Capture bloggers have written many posts about the new HubSpot 3 tools. Highlights include updates to the contacts database, a new email tool and marketing automation workflows, all designed to take digital marketing to a more personalized level. Another feature that, personally, I’ve been really excited to use on my client accounts is the new CTA (call-to-action) builder.

Within seconds of seeing your call to action (CTA), a visitor should be able to determine exactly why he or she should take action and what they will get in return for their information or money. The most effective CTA's contain action verbs, which we know describe an action or activity. Excluding these powerful words from your copy leaves the reader with little to no direction and often hurts your click rate ultimately affecting your conversion rate.

At the core of inbound marketing is attracting your visitors to click on your compelling calls to action. I don't know the actual statistics, but it seems like the vast majority of CTAs are about getting something for FREE, usually a download or a free trial. Nobody would argue that free is bad, but if everybody offers something for free, how do we decide which button to click? Here are several examples of great CTAs that go beyond free and actually sell the goods.