9 Things Your CTA’s Must Have To Be Effective

March 20, 2016

Your Call-To-Action is one of the most important pieces in your marketing sequence. Depending on the amount of traffic to your offers, getting this wrong could literally cost you thousands of dollars.

Why would a little button make such a big difference? There are many psychological reasons, but the main one is that internet has gotten so big, and your visitors are completely distracted. As such, marketers are all competing for one thing…

ATTENTION.

Given that your typical visitor is scanning quickly, and could hit that back button at any moment, you MUST move them quickly and easily to the next logical step in your marketing sequence.

Here are 9 ways to make that happen…

Visibility
Surround your CTA button with white space. This will allow your button to stand out, and not compete with other content for attention.
Color
Make sure to select a bright color that is eye catching. Greens yellows and oranges are proven to work well. Also make sure that your font color and size are easily read against the background color of the button.
Size
Your CTA button should sized relevant to the rest of the page, and be large enough to highlight the text that it surrounds.
Font
Do not use any unusual or italic fonts. Lettering should be simple and clear. Font height should be 1/2 to 1/3 this size of the button. Use either all caps or upper and lower case in every word.
Placement
Often times the middle of the page works well, but sometimes a CTA button will look nice justified left at the end of a paragraph. Just make sure it can be found easily.
Value
The CTA must have a high perceived value to your visitor, otherwise they will not click on it.
Communication
Use language that is a command. Tell them what to do. “Click Here” has worked well for years, but try to be a little more creative. Sometimes first-person commands are effective too, like “Yes, Send Me My XYZ!”
Congruence
Your CTA must be the next logical step for your visitor to take. It must be congruent with the content that was most recently viewed by your visitor.
Simplicity
The language of your CTA must be clear and simple. It cannot have any words or phrases that could be misunderstood, even if it intended for a more intellectual audience.

Want to really nail it?

Use these 2 Rules to get it right…every time:

The 10 Foot Rule:
Stand back 10 feet from your desktop or laptop computer. Make sure that your visitor can tell what to do with your CTA, even from that distance.

The 5th Grade Rule:
Don’t ever use language that a 5th grader would not understand.

Even without any fancy split-testing, follow these simple steps, and your marketing sequence will be a well oiled machine!

Bio
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Jeff Schechter

With the soul of an entrepreneur, and many business ventures under his belt, Shecky is the Marketing Director at Black Box Social Media LLC, (BBSM) an online marketing company that uses the latest digital marketing strategies, such as video marketing and pay per click marketing, to allow businesses to get found and generate leads online. Shecky is passionate about training and coaching other entrepreneurs to achieve high levels of success in their own online marketing ventures.