Smarter Inbound Marketing with Smart CTAs

Smarter Inbound Marketing with Smart CTAs

By Meghan SullivanDec 20 /2012

best practices for smart ctasSince 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.

The new CTA tool keeps all of your CTAs together in HubSpot for easy management and editing. CTAs that are edited are automatically updated wherever they exist on your website—no need to manually update each page. You can A/B test your CTAs to determine what message, color or graphic generates the greatest response from your site visitors. HubSpot does this for you by creating a test group that randomly displays a different CTA to each website visitor, making A/B testing a snap. (Bonus: You can A/B test CTAs in e-mails, not just on webpages!)

Perhaps most exciting, you can now deliver a personalized experience to every web visitor with Smart CTAs. Your visitors will no longer see a call to action for a piece of content they have already downloaded. The site will display fresh content every time they visit. Studying Kuno’s website analytics, we’ve seen an increase in direct traffic since employing Smart CTAs. Visitors catch on that there’s always new, educational content waiting for them, and return on their own. Here are a few best practices and ideas for using Smart CTAs to promote your advanced content:

  • First, test. It can be quite remarkable the difference in response between a green button and an orange one. Or a message that says “Free eBook,” instead of “Learn More.” (On a side note, you can learn more about effective CTA copy and A/B testing from Senior Consultant Shannon’s recent blog post.) By taking this step, you can maximize your click-throughs and landing page form submissions.
  • Target niche audiences. I have a client whose content and products appeal to multiple audiences each with unique interests and motivators. We wrote an eBook that targeted one of the more specialized segments. This content doesn’t appeal to all of our website visitors, but we still wanted to promote it on as many pages as possible. We created a Smart CTA that makes this content available to the right audience, and if a visitor is not a member of that audience, they will see something more tailored to them.
  • Remember the funnel. Smart CTAs can be designed like a workflow. Based on past activity on your site, Smart CTAs can nurture leads through the sales funnel. If someone has downloaded one or two TOFU pieces, the next time they visit, they should see a MOFU piece. Design your Smart CTA “workflow” in a way that not only makes sense to your visitors, but also helps you reach your goals of obtaining more sales-qualified, bottom-of-the-funnel leads.

So, how does it work? You can build a Smart CTA triggered by any piece of information in your contacts database. It could be based on list membership, the last piece of content downloaded, the last page visited, or any combination of attributes you can think of. (Learn more here.) While this can quickly set your brain to spinning, it’s a powerful tool that produces the type of individualized experience buyers have come to expect. 

Have you used HubSpot’s Smart CTA builder? What kind of results are you seeing? Let us know in the comments!


Meghan SullivanWith a decade of marketing experience, Meghan Sullivan is a Senior Consultant at Kuno Creative and is passionate about developing and executing inbound marketing strategies for her clients. When she’s not doing that, she’s probably curled up on the couchwith her dog and iPad, or exploring Cleveland’s incredible food scene. Connect with Meghan on Twitter or LinkedIn.


 

 Photo credit: Tim Green aka atoach's photostream