Bay Area Inbound Marketing Blog

Best Practices for a CTA or Call-to-Action? Bay Area Inbound

Posted by Laurie Monahan on Sun, Nov 09, 2014 @ 02:25 PM

Call-to-Actions (CTA) Buttons are an important part of lead generation marketing.  

CTAs should have short text and/or pictures that give the prospect an idea of what they will get if they take the time to download the offer.

CTAs reflect the offers behind them. They are designed to attract prospects at different stages in the sales funnel.

Different people are attracted to different types of offers. That is why you should have a variety of CTAs for offers posted as often as possible on your website. Offers should be placed to offer further information related to the webpage on which they are posted if possible. They should always be educational or promotional to bring prospects down your sales funnel.

Offers should never be unrelated giveaways like starbucks gift cards, movie tickets or visas. Those types of offers only get you people who want freebies, not real leads.

The following are a few examples of different CTAs.

CTA_by_Bay_Area_Inbound CTAs_by_Bay_Area_inbound  Call_to_Actions_Bay_Area_Inbound   

 Where should I put my CTA buttons?

  • CTA buttons should be placed directly on your website. There are all kinds of statistics that prove the websites with more CTAs capture more warm leads which can then be nurtured down the sales funnel at the bottom of this blog article. The more buttons on your website with different kinds of offers, the more leads you capture.
  • CTA buttons should be placed in emails to announce the exciting offer you will send to prospects.
  • CTA are used again in lead nurturing so all prospects can get all the offers that apply regardless of when they become a lead.
  • CTA buttons can and should be placed directly in social media so people can see your educational offers.

What happens when a prospect clicks the CTA?

Once a CTA is clicked, the prospect goes to a dedicated landing page that shows a tiny image of your offer and has bullet points briefly describing your offer. There is also a form so they can fill it out and "download now!"

Forms should only ask for a few fields of information so the prospect will fill the form. You can ask for more information on subsequent forms using progressive form fill. In this way, you learn more about your prosect as they move themselves down the sales funnel by clicking on more and more educational offers.

After the form is filled and the prospect hits the 'download now!' button, the prospect will see a thank you screen that lets them know they have completed the form successfully and will receive the offer shortly via email. The screen will also let them view the offer from this screen. 

Statistics about Lead Generation and CTAs from Hubspot in 2014:

  • Call to actions promoting ebooks get almost twice the click through rate as emails promoting webinars. (HubSpot) 
  • Companies with 30 or more landing pages generate 7x more leads than those with fewer than 10. (HubSpot)
  • 48% of marketers build a new landing page for each marketing campaign. (MarketingSherpa)
  • 68% of B2B businesses use landing pages to garner a new sales lead for future conversion. (MarketingSherpa)
  • 16% of landing pages are free of navigation bars. (MarketingSherpa)
  • 48% of offers have multiple offers on them. (MarketingSherpa)
  • 22% of offer-related graphics on landing pages are not clickable. (MarketingSherpa)
  • Businesses with 31 to 40 landing pages got 7 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages. (HubSpot)
  • Those with over 40 landing pages got 12 times more leads than those with only 1 to 5 landing pages. (HubSpot)

I hope this has helped you understand CTAs a little better, their uses, and best practices for using them.

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Bay Area  Inbound is a full-service Inbound Marketing Agency in the SF Bay Area that specializes in campaign creation and lead generation to significantly increase revenue for technology companies.

For more information on getting traffic to your site and generating the leads you need, contact laurie@bayareainbound.com or  510-543-7593.

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Topics: Marketing Consultants in Bay Area, CTA, Call-to-Action, Call-to-Actions, What is a CTA?, What is a Call-to-Action?, CTAs