If your funnel isn’t performing well, the first question you should ask yourself is, “Do I have a compelling call to action?” If you don’t you could be in big trouble.
Why?
Because your call to action may be the most important piece of your Facebook ad, landing page or sales page.
Yes, your headline and copy are incredibly important. They grab a reader’s attention and keep them on the page.
But if your call to action doesn’t compel your reader, they won’t do anything. They won’t “take action,” which leaves you in the lurch, wondering why nobody loves you or your products.
First, let’s ask the obvious question:
What is a Call to Action?
According to Wikipedia:
A call to action (CTA) is a marketing term used extensively in advertising and selling. It refers to any device designed to prompt an immediate response or encourage an immediate sale. A CTA most often refers to the use of words or phrases that can be incorporated into sales scripts, advertising messages or web pages that encourage consumers to take prompt action.
In the online world, we think about a CTA as a short phrase like “Buy Now,” “Sign Up,” or “Submit.”
A call to action is any phrase that instructs the reader to take a specific action.
Your CTA can be:
- Part of your headline
- At the end of your body copy
- On a button or an image
Most importantly, it should tell the reader exactly what you want them to do.
Now that you know what a call to action is and what it should do, here are 7 ways you can improve your call to action and boost your conversion rate.
1. Have a Call to Action
I cannot tell you how many times I have been to a website, seen a Facebook ad or ended up on a landing page where there was no obvious call to action. If people don’t know what you want them to do, they won’t do it.
Here’s an example of a Facebook ad with no CTA
There are no instructions here. Not even in the video (with the sound off). I watched the whole thing. The link won’t cut it. You have to tell people what you want them to do.
You can’t expect people to blindly click on your ad anymore. You must give them a compelling reason to click. The only reason I stopped to watch this ad is because I was looking for an example of a Facebook ad without a call to action. Otherwise, I would have passed it by.
If you don’t have a call to action, that’s a good indicator of why no one is converting.
2. Focus on One Action Per Ad or Page
You can have multiple CTAs on a landing page or as part of your Facebook ad. You can add buttons in several places, state the action you want your reader to take in the copy and in the headline, that’s fine. But don’t ask them to do more than one thing in your ad or on your page.
If you want them to download your white paper, focus solely on getting them to download your white paper. If you want them to buy your book, focus solely on getting them to buy your book.
Asking someone to do more than one thing can confuse them, which usually results in them taking no action, and clicking away from your ad or page.
3. Make it About the End User, Not the Product or the Company
As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, it’s not about you, it’s about your customer. This applies in your calls to action as well. Use “you” and “your” to engage with your potential customer.
You can even use “me” as though you’re speaking as the customer, like we do on this landing page for our High-Ticket Client Acquisition Tool Kit:
4. Be Specific
We’re all overwhelmed by media these days. There are too many ways to get information, so we tend to tune out any message that isn’t specifically directed at us. “Buy Now,” Sign Up” and “Shop Now” can get lost in the constant babble.
Instead, make your call to action specific to whatever you’re offering. Instead of using “Download Now,” use “Download Your Checklist Now.” I’ll often include the name of the download or product in my CTA, to remind people of exactly what they’re getting, like this:
5. Remind the End User of the Benefit
In Part 1 of this series, I talked about selling the benefits, not the features of your product, because that’s what really matters to your customer.
It never hurts to remind your customer of how you’re solving their problem as part of your call to action. You’ll notice in the example below, I ask the reader to take a specific action, and remind the reader of the benefit they’ll get by taking that action.
6. Test Regularly
As hard as you may try, you have no idea what the “perfect” call to action may be for your audience. And it may change over time. So, test… test… test…
Test the copy, test the color of the button, test the placement of your call to action, test one call to action versus several. There are hundreds of variables you could test.
The important thing is to test one at a time. Don’t change several things at once or you won’t know which change caused the boost in your conversion rate.
Your test changes can be drastic, or they can be minor. And minor does make a difference. AWeber got a 12.75% increase in conversion when they changed the copy on this button from “Get Started for Just $1” to “Get Started Now for Just $1.”
7. Track Your Results
If you want to know what call to actions work best for your audience you must track them. Certain CTAs may work at different stages of your customer lifecycle, or at different places in your funnel.
Sometimes, a landing page or Facebook ad can be improved by a simple change in your CTA. But you won’t know what type of change to make, if you’re not tracking how well your calls to action convert.
Tracking your conversions in FunnelDash will show you where and when people are converting, so you know which ad campaign is getting you the best results, and which funnel is giving you the best lifetime customer value.
Sign up for a 14-day free trial of FunnelDash and see how well your calls to action are performing.
Oh look, a call to action button. You should click on that.
