Recently I was discussing accounting website design with a client and we talked about using a great Call to Action to get more marketing leads. Whether you are using inbound marketing, content marketing or just starting small and simply have a website, one of the earliest keys to conversion are powerful CTA’s.
Many companies use CTA’s that are too aggressive. For instance, most websites start with a “Contact Us.” This is great to start out with, but soon you will need to develop something a little more subtle. You need to design a CTA that offers value to your visitors. A “Contact Us” CTA only adds value for you, right?
A great CTA is the beginning of developing a content marketing, or inbound marketing strategy.
Offer: So first you need to design your offer. What can you offer visitors that they will find:
- Valuable
- Relevant
- Powerful
Putting together a valuable piece of content for your visitors sounds intimidating, but you can make it as simple as you like. For a material handling site, we made a comparison between automated and manual material handling. It was a simple excel sheet where you could plug in different variables to see if automation made sense for your company.
It probably took about 8 hours to develop with one of the engineers. It also generated seven new leads in 60 days. Since our qualified lead value was north of $15,000, it was well worth our time.
Design: Your CTA needs to tie into the overall design of your site. The use of color is imperative. Whether your CTA buttons are a contrasting color or a complementary color on a white background, it needs to stand out and call attention to itself.
The text on your CTA button needs to look enticing. It should be well formatted and look clickable.
“Many sites use CTA’s that are too aggressive.”
Also, give your CTA some room to breathe. White space is your friend. It helps your button stand out and makes it more inviting resulting in more clicks.
Placement: There are some traditional places that you can put a CTA.
A good place to add a Call to Action would be above the fold on your front page.
An alternative to that is a slide in CTA that appears on your front page. It gives a bit of action to make it more noticeable and increases the chance of clickability.
Another great place for a CTA is in your blog articles. Traditionally they come at the end. However, newer research is showing that having a CTA a couple of times on your blog article is more effective. Try adding one near the top and a repeat towards the bottom.
Want to learn more about tactics that can improve your website’s effectiveness? Download our guide to inbound marketing.