Call to Action: Strategies for Boosting Engagement Online

The most basic aspect of any effective marketing plan is the call to action. Whether you’re interested in customer service, product sales, or social media engagement, the call to action is a basic yet useful framework directing users toward your desired outcome. But what is a call to action, really? And why does it work (or not work) in some contexts? This chapter will get you up to speed on both the psychology and the pragmatics of the call to action: what it is, what makes it effective, and how you can use it to make your audience act.

What Is a Call to Action (CTA) and Why Is It Important?

Intentionally results-oriented, marketing tends to converge with the discipline of psychology because understanding human behavior is fundamental to achieving desired outcomes. Marketers not only need to know what humans do but also why they do it and under what circumstances. This knowledge enables them to craft messages that resonate both on a conscious and subconscious level. The most effective marketing is actually invisible because it feels like a natural part of the ecosystem in which you find yourself. Still, it provides seamless guidance on the path to making a desired set of decisions and taking a specific series of actions. Whether for a B2B or B2C audience, the process is fundamentally the same.

The Functional Role of CTAs in Marketing

When it comes to effective CTAs, being specific and having a clear intention are the name of the game. The online charity drive might go with something like “Donate Now,” which is a direct command that makes clear what action it’s expecting from the user. On the other hand, a movie studio might go with “Watch the Teaser” for something like a trailer for a new release. The two are not exactly the same, but both strategies are very much aims at user expectations and immediate interaction.

A Good CTA: Beyond Initial Choices

A good CTA, like a good argument, doesn’t just go with the first colors and phrasings that come to mind. A/B testing, as it’s known, is evaluative. It’s at once a creative and a scientific exercise for the marketers who do it well.

Beyond Sales: Exploring the Broader Purposes of CTAs

Although many people link call-to-actions (CTAs) with pushing sales, their usefulness reaches much further. CTAs can assist in creating brand recognition, achieving email sign-ups, promoting social sharing, and pushing event registrations. Nurturing leads can be done with CTAs that are written as a “softer” call-to-action. For instance, “Read More.” If you want to “Read More,” is that not also an invitation to a journey? Isn’t that also a kind of path lit up as a course to be followed? Reading naturally leads (pun intended) to more actions taken. Of course, in this very classical sense of seeing the CTA as a lead nurturing tool, the paths can be lit up in either direction—that is, toward either the nurturing or the conversion kind of action.

Key Elements of an Effective CTA

Creating effective calls to action is more than just coming up with clever wording. The best CTAs adhere to a formula of clear, intentional, action-driven language; smart, conjoint design; and, most importantly, contextual relevance. This trifecta ensures that your audience knows precisely what you want them to do—and has the motivation to do it right now.

Using Clear and Actionable Language

What makes a good CTA is not some magical quality but rather well-chosen action verbs that feel significant and important. When we read the words “grab,” “boost,” or “unlock,” we can almost feel ourselves moving in the direction those verbs are indicating. Strong word choices create a sense of motivational momentum that carries the user forward. Poor word choices make “Click here” and “Learn more” feel like deadlines, not the kinds of things that will help us if we want to get ahead in life. “Grab Your Discount Today” signifies far more than just a simple discount. It is a specific directive that also hints at the possible gains for the person on the receiving end.

Creating a Sense of Urgency

Conversions skyrocket when there’s urgency in the equation. Examples like “Limited Time Offer” or “Ends at Midnight” create not just constrain but also countdown pressure that makes users act now instead of later. Why does urgency work so well? At the most basic level, it harnesses the power of the human conservation instinct and increased opportunity costing, going beyond regular thinking with an “I must do it now, or I will miss out” prompt—also known as the FOMO (fear of missing out) that so many of us experience.

Tailoring CTAs to Audience Intent

The tone and assertiveness of call to action should not be uniformly applied across the board. This is particularly true when you consider the wide array of user behaviors and buying stages. For instance, new visitors might be more receptive to CTAs that tilt toward the educational (“Discover How It Works”), while repeat users may have an appetite for something a little more directive and outcome-based (“Claim Your Rewards”).

Design That Stands Out: Colors, Placements, and Contrast

Undeniably, CTA effectiveness hinges on their visual appeal, meaning that design must do its part in working with the copy. Making a CTA visually appealing involves using elements such as high contrast and sufficient spacing, but these are just the basics. Making a CTA pop visually means using color, making the CTA itself large enough to appreciate, and ensuring that the CTA is present in the layout in such a way that it can actually be seen and understood. Whether or not a person makes use of a button is the only metric we need to understand when it comes to the clickability and effectiveness of a call to action.

Prioritizing Mobile Optimization

The principal component of web interactivity for us these days is mobile devices. Consequently, today’s calls to action must obey the usability rules of mobile devices. Thus, mobile CTA button design should ensure that buttons are clear, and that they and the text associated with them are visible. Also, while rule #1 development for any design component is “Don’t make the user scroll too much,” mobile devices come with their own browsing behavior that ought to be optimized for as well.

Common Types of CTAs Across Platforms

CTAs go beyond platforms and have several purposes. They can live on multiple platforms, but their platform specificity matters when it comes to engagement. Whether you’re using a CTA on your website, an email, or a social media post, it’s essential to tailor the CTAs to act with platform-specific behaviors.

CTAs on Landing Pages and Websites

The digital storefront for your brand is your website, and it is there that you attempt to guide potential customers toward actions you want them to take—be it filling out a contact form, viewing your products, or downloading a resource. It is a best practice in web design to have at least one “call to action” that is easily visible “above the fold,” which essentially means any part of the website that is visible without scrolling down.

CTAs on Social Media Channels

Fast, engaging calls to action are what social media is all about. These platforms work best when they’re telling users what to do. And this is where it gets exciting for us because Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Snapchat all provide opportunities for us to include buttons or directives that enable the user to act right then and there. “Learn More,” “Book Now,” even “Pay Attention to Us”—CTAs are our way of extending the conversation past the first impression the user gets when seeing our post.

Testing and Improving Your CTAs

Creating a call to action is only part of the work—continuous optimization is the other part. Even slight changes in word choice, position, or tone can lead to significant changes in conversion rates.

Leveraging A/B Testing for CTAs

With A/B testing, you can pit two versions of a call to action against each other to determine the better performer. One version may command, “Start Your Free Trial Now,” to which one might reply, “Is that an order, or can I just take my time, which I really need, seeing as I never get to do anything at work besides this?” Another version may suggest, in a way that seems to ask rather than tell, “See How We Can Help.”

Measuring CTA Success with Analytics

Your CTA’s performance can be analyzed very thoroughly with the tools that are made for this purpose. They give you incredible levels of detail and an almost unfathomable amount of data. Understanding your CTA’s underlying performance is very helpful because it lets you know just how well or poorly it’s currently functioning.

If it’s performing poorly, you can then start hypothesizing as to why that’s the case, especially since there are so many potential reasons that could be at play. Is the language bad? The visuals? The placement? And what about social media CTAs? They have their own unique set of challenges and potential pitfalls. On the other hand, if a CTA is working well, it’s equally important to understand the reasons for its success so that you can replicate those factors in future CTAs.

How to Automate and Enhance CTA Strategies with WoopSocial

Dramatic improvements in scalability can occur when your CTA workflows achieve consistency and efficiency. WoopSocial is a tool that can simplify the scheduling, automating, and managing of CTAs across the platforms of social media. For all appearances, WoopSocial acts as a time-saving device, allowing you to post everywhere you need to be without being everywhere you don’t need to be. And yet, although it is potent enough to pay for itself in squeezing time efficiencies from your social media operations, it is well worth your attention for the quality of its suggestions on pretexting and for its general facilitation of those operations.

CTAs that work are the building blocks of purposeful user action. They take the reader from engaging with content to actually doing something meaningful. A CTA operates on the cusp between the content and the outcome. And while a good CTA can step up a brand’s performance, a bad one can hold it back. CTAs that work are well-written; they are also well-designed, well-placed, and, best of all, they do their thing without being annoying.