Your website is not only your most visible (if it’s optimized for search) and important marketing tool, it is also the best way to convert visitors into leads. The catch? It must contain a call-to-action (CTA), also known as a reason for people to contact you. Once they click that call-to-action, they fill out a short form with their information, and they become a lead. Here are the steps you should take to put together an effective call-to-action.
Step 1: Think like your website visitors/potential clients.
Ask yourself:
- Why are people visiting my website?
- What products or services are they looking for?
- What problems do they have that I can solve?
- What can I give them that will be valuable to them? Information? Discounts? Educational products?
- Why do they trust me?
Step 2: Create visitors something of value for free.
Put together relevant, educational and nonpromotional products and services to give away to Web visitors. Possibilities include:
- An e-book
- A “how-to” video or series of videos
- Tips, tricks and/or industry best practices that they can use
- A discount on their first product or service purchase, or a discount on their first month when they sign up for 6 months’ worth of services
- A free trial
You can even bundle material into a kit to make the call-to-action more enticing.
Step 3: Make your CTA stand out.
Your CTA should grab your visitors’ attention. Use color to help it pop, and place it prominently at the top of your website (visitors should not have to scroll down to see it).
Step 4: Make your CTA action-oriented.
Create a sense of urgency and tell people what to do: Sign up now! Contact us! Download today! Make sure the images and text in the CTA are clickable, and match the keywords in the CTA with the keywords on the landing page (the page they go to once they click the CTA).
Step 5: Keep the sign-up form short.
Don’t scare people away once they are redirected to the sign-up form on a landing page. Capture their name, company and e-mail; anything else is optional. Don’t include a clear or cancel option on the landing page. Once they’re there, you want them to sign up only, not read your latest blog post, visit another page on your website, or subscribe to an RSS feed.
Step 5: Place the CTA everywhere.
You should place your CTA on your website’s homepage, in a pay-per-click ad, in your e-mail signature, in blog posts, on direct mail pieces, in an e-mail, in your newsletter, on your brochure, in videos, etc.
I am working on CTAs right now for my own website, but I might as well give a shout out to Network Solutions, because their home page contains not one but five CTAs, two of which are above-the-fold (in other words, you don’t need to scroll down to see them). One is static and offers a deal on Web hosting; one is a slider that shows three different CTAs for their affiliate program, Web hosting and a free domain name, and Refer-a-Friend promotion; and the smaller one below the fold promotes all of their online marketing products and services.
Image by Flickr user Samantha Tadman (Creative Commons)
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