Having a compelling call to action or CTA is a crucial aspect of your SEO strategy. You have to customize your CTAs—you cannot just leave buttons that say “click here” and expect the leads and traffic to come in.
You have to make people want to do as you say, and you can do that if you have a persuasive CTA. However, you don’t get just one type of visitor to your website. It would be best if you created different types of CTAs for different goals. Here are seven types of calls to action that you should have on your website.
One of the primary purposes of CTAs is to get more leads from your website. Lead generation CTAs should be in areas of your website that register a high percentage of new visitors, like landing pages and blog posts. Usually, people place lead generation CTAs at the end of a post, in a sidebar, or as a banner in a corner.
You could also use this type of CTAs on pages or overlays with lead magnets. A lead magnet is a free download or subscription that you offer visitors in exchange for their email address. This strategy will always boost your subscriptions and inquiries since you can customize it to your audience.
For example, if you are a service provider, you can create a downloadable case study on how you’ve helped one of your clients reach their goals. Meanwhile, an e-commerce store could ask people to subscribe to their newsletter in exchange for discount coupons.
Once you have people interested in your lead magnet, you need to transition smoothly into having them fill out a form and submit their information to your database. Besides lead generation, you could also use form submission CTAs if you offer consultations, product demos, and free trials.
What you must remember about this type of CTA is that simpler is better. Fewer fields to fill out means more conversions since people often get turned off by needing to provide a lot of information or performing plenty of steps to get a desired action. However, you still need copy—your forms should clearly state the information you want and the next things your visitor can expect after filling out your form.
At times, you want people to go further into your website instead of purchasing something outright. This is especially true for B2B companies that rely on in-depth discussions of the benefits of purchasing or subscribing to their product. However, you cannot publish a wall of text on one page—no one will want to read that.
Instead, entice viewers to click through. Feature a few sentences about the item or offering you’re highlighting and hide the rest behind a “Read more” button. This button will lead to a static page containing more information. Instead of scrolling down your homepage, you direct the traffic to different pages, which boosts your entire website.
The way you write purchase CTAs will depend on the type of product you sell. If you have an e-commerce store, you’d want visitors to examine as many pictures and pages as possible. Multiple buttons that say “Add to Cart” or similar phrases. Meanwhile, info product sellers need long, detailed landing pages with one price-related CTA per offering. Finally, a service provider needs a pricing table with multiple plan levels.
Offering different price points create choice, which helps provide control to the consumer. You want them to select what they see as the best option for them, instead of you telling them what to buy. Different price points also make products more accessible. Some buyers have limited funds and would appreciate a bare-bones version of your product. Meanwhile, you should show those with a larger budget than you have more comprehensive packages for them.
You also need CTAs that enable you to share your content. Social sharing buttons are a simple way for customers and visitors to engage with your content—include them on places like blog posts and in-depth reads. Put yourself in your website visitors’ shoes; would you put social sharing buttons on things that others wouldn’t find valuable? Get to know your audience and where they are online and include buttons for those websites or platforms on yours.
You usually see this type of CTA at the end of blog posts, on product pages, and anywhere a potential customer might want to go to research your product one last time before purchasing. A sales-focused CTA can be more straightforward than lead generation or read more CTAs since they appear towards the bottom of the marketing funnel.
Whether you’re conducting a workshop, live training, roundtable discussion, or demonstration online or in person, your goal is to get as many attendees as possible. An event promotion CTA helps alert people to your event. This kind of CTA can appear anywhere in the marketing funnel, making it one of the most versatile in your toolkit.
If the event is exclusive to your customers or subscribers, you can place your CTA for it on their dashboard, login page, newsletter, or other pages accessible only to them. Events, even buttoned-up ones, are livelier and require a little flair with words. You have the license to write witty, niche-specific CTAs for events.
A call to action is directly responsible for people engaging with your brand. If you only present them with your product’s features and write about why you’re the better option, they wouldn’t know what to do with that information. Give them a reason to care about your company and the products you offer—nudge them toward the action you want them to take.
Ranked can help you clarify your content strategy. We are an SEO platform and service helping enterprises and agencies earn organic traffic for their websites. Book a call with the team to learn more or activate your free trial today!