A website can be a very powerful Marketing tool with the right strategy and design.
Smart Marketers use their website as an opportunity to collect email addresses for potential future sales, and if it makes sense, to generate more direct leads for sales – today.
As such, there are a number of different calls to action for different situations and goals.
In the past, we’ve talked specifically about how to create website conversions for professional services firms, but the tip in this article can help any business or website.
Here are 3 calls to action your website needs to make the most of your online presence.
Social Share Buttons
Do you have a blog? If not, you really should as they’re the perfect vehicle for creating inbound organic traffic through search, but that’s a discussion for another day.
Assuming you do have a blog, or are regularly creating shareable content in some format on your website, it’s important to give readers an easy way to share it.
Social share buttons that are automatically included on all blog posts are an easy way to encourage social sharing. Using someone else’s network to get the word out about your product or service means getting in front of potential customers for free, with no additional effort!
If you use WordPress, there are many different plugins for social share buttons. Some live at the top or bottom of a blog post, while others follow you as your scroll down and read an article. Regardless of which specific buttons you choose, make sure that they’re formatted in a way that’s useful to you and your readers.
A few recommendations for quality WordPress social share button plugins:
When clicked, good social share buttons automatically include the title of your article and a link for interested parties to read more. Great social share buttons also automatically include your Twitter handle and a hashtag, if you choose
Very similar to the idea of using social share buttons is the use of Click to Tweet calls to action in the body of your blog posts.
Click to Tweet is a WordPress plugin that calls out specific text or a quote from an article. Click it and a Twitter share dialog box pops up, including the quoted text and a link to the post. A mix of Click to Tweet CTAs and social share buttons will help other people spread the word for you!
Sign up for Email
Another important call to action, if not the most important, is the email signup CTA. Once a customer finds your website, you want to do whatever possible to make sure they keep coming back. The easiest way to do that is to get them on your email list.
Getting more followers on social is important, but it’s essentially rented land. What would you do if Facebook suddenly shut your account down? Or closed it’s doors to everyone?
Besides these seemingly unlikely “what-if” situations – the truth of the matter is that Facebook has made it much more difficult and expensive to reach your followers. Organic reach is at record low – about 2% of your total number of followers. Wouldn’t you rather reach 100% of those people?
Sure, not everyone’s going to open your message, but Mailchimp, an email marketing software platform, reports average email open rates across various industries being no lower than about 16%. We like those odds.
At any rate, it’s important to include multiple calls to action to get email signups. There are a couple common areas to encourage email signups across your website:
- Delayed email signup pop up forms
- Sidebar opt-in forms
- Content upgrades on blog posts
- Full-width floating email capture bars, like Hello Bar
Regardless of the mechanics of collecting email addresses, it’s important to be purposeful with the language you use to entice website browsers.
A popular way to encourage email signups is by offering a lead magnet. A lead magnet is basically some sort of freebie/sign up bonus that addresses an issue or interest of the target customer.
Lead magnets may take the form of a helpful checklist, video series, exclusive content, whitepaper, webinar, and more. The sky’s the limit – just make sure it’s relevant and desired by your target customer.
And once you’ve gotten someone on your list, make sure to deliver on what you’ve promised! Otherwise, they’re likely to unsubscribe and you’ll be back at square one.
Get in Touch/Request a Quote
Some businesses have long sales cycles and must nurture leads for days, weeks ,or months, before making a direct ask for a sale.
But regardless of if you typically have a long or short sales cycle, it’s important to give customers an way to get in touch to ask questions and learn more.
At minimum, a website should have a contact page with an email form and other important details like a phone number. But contact information doesn’t have to live exclusively on this page – you should also add it to your header, footer, and sidebar (depending on your layout).
As a general rule, it’s a good idea to make it possible for a customer to get in touch no matter what page they land on; no click through necessary.
If your business operates in the services industry, it’s imperative to also spell out your call to action a little more specifically. “Get a Quote” is the perfect call to action to direct customers to what they’re looking for. More directly, “Schedule an Appointment” also works.
These examples represent just a few of many successful call to action possibilities your website should use.
Make the most out of your online presence by implementing these powerful conversion tools, and always be testing to see what works best.
Now it’s your turn – what website calls to action have you found success with? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
