Call to action phrases are critical if you want people to take action when they see your marketing or advertising campaigns.
It’s your responsibility as a marketer or business owner to coax your customers toward the buying phrase—if they want to do business with you but don’t have clear next steps, they won’t take them.
Similarly, if your call to action phrase reads more like a “call to do whatever you feel like at the time” phrase, then you’re not inciting or inviting people to do anything further with your brand.
Your call to action (CTA) must be direct, clear, and convenient. If there is any ambiguity, passive voice, or confusion surrounding your CTA, you can’t expect it to effectively drive customers toward a purchase.
Here are several tried-and-true CTAs that can work in a variety of industries and mediums.
“Reserve your spot now—space is limited!”
If you have an event going on, it’s understandable that you want to have as many preordered seats as possible so you know how many people you need to plan for, or how much last-minute advertising you need to do.
Increase the number of preorders by creating a sense of urgency around the event—if people think there are plenty of spots available, or that it doesn’t matter if they are preorder tickets, they’ll wait until the day of the event to determine if they want to go or not.
By indicating that there is limited space, you create urgency around reserving a seat, effectively making them decide whether or not they want to attend.
“Download our eBook for more information.”
Gated content can be tricky; you don’t want to gate things unless it’s good, quality content.
But if the content is up to par, then you’ve hooked your customer with some good information that will help address their pain points, and you’ve included even more of that information in your gated content.
Your CTA tells your audience that there’s more where that came from, and if your content is up to snuff, they’re likely to give you the information you need to get what they’re looking for.
Just make sure there actually is more where that came from, or you’ll end up with unhappy consumers.
“Claim your offer while supplies last!”
Much like the first example, creating an offer with a limited amount of claim opportunities is a great way to instill urgency in your potential clients. If there are only a certain number of discounts or offers available, your audience will want to make sure they get their hands on it before it’s all gone.
Be sure to set the amount high enough to create a good return for you, but not so high that it looks like you lied to your audience about there being a limited number of offers.
“Use your discount before it expires!”
This kind of CTA doesn’t put a limit on the amount of discounts available, but rather creates urgency by putting a schedule on the discount availability.
This is especially effective during seasonal business times. For example, retail discounts during the holidays, tax service discounts during tax season, winter automotive discounts before the snow falls, etc.
By placing an expiration date on your offer, you ensure that people come in to take advantage of the offer in a timely manner.
“For more tips, join our email list.”
Much like the gated content CTA, this one promises additional valued information for your consumers.
Whether it’s tips surrounding cooking, selling, shopping, or marketing, people enjoy getting email when they feel like it benefits or speaks to them in some way. If your audience gets the feeling that you’ll continue to provide valuable content to them, they won’t mind getting occasional emails from you, which also help coax them through the buying cycle.
Here’s the catch again, though: you actually have to provide valuable content. Don’t forget that part, or else your audience will see they’ve made a mistake…and quite quickly.
“To see the rest of our blog, visit our website.”
This is a CTA that you can use on social media platforms in order to drive website traffic.
If you’ve written a piece of content on your website, it’s okay to duplicate it in other places, but to maximize the traffic to your website (and hopefully your other blog posts and products), include the first paragraph of your blog post and end with this CTA.
If you’ve written good content that hooks people in that first paragraph, it will be easy to talk them into meandering over to your website to finish what they started.
As you can see, good CTAs revolve around three things:
- Urgency because of limited resources
- Urgency because of time limits
- Added value
And remember: sincerity is the key factor in these call to action phrases. If you aren’t being genuine or honest about the actual urgency or value, customers will see through it. They might bite the one time, but they will never bite again if you don’t seem like an honest business.
Always do what you say you will in your CTAs. Actually set limits and expiration dates on offers. Actually provide valuable content. And always, always make the “ask” direct, clear, not confusing, and to the point so your consumers know what you want them to do next—and feel good about taking that next step.
Get More Tips and Tricks
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get the latest best-in-class marketing strategies delivered right to your inbox.
