6 Keys to Crafting Marketing CTAs (Calls to Action)

Getting Your Audience to Act is Critical to Achieving Your Marketing Goals

They say that actions speak louder than words, but in the marketing world, it’s the words you choose that move customers to take action. After all, the essence of marketing is to persuade your audience toward a desired behavior and to move forward in their interaction with you and your brand — whether to make a purchase, visit your website, sign up for your newsletter, read your blog, or follow your social account. This is why calls to action (CTAs) are so integral to achieving your marketing goals in nearly every piece of content you deploy. 

Everyone who surfs the web, television, or radio is familiar with calls to action, whether they know it or not. In fact, we are bombarded with them each and every day in one way or another. At the end of a Facebook ad promoting a new and improved shampoo, that button prompting you to “Learn more” is a simple CTA. When the billboard urges you to sail away on the smooth hits of yacht rock by tuning in to a specific radio station, that’s a CTA. When a political mailer ends its pitch by asking you to contribute to a candidate by visiting their website, that’s a CTA. 

Crafting the right calls to action are essential to turning potential customers into new customers and maintaining fruitful, ongoing relationships with existing ones. Think of CTAs as the road signs guiding your audience on their customer journey further through the sales funnel. From your emails and social posts to your mailers and commercials, here are six keys to writing CTAs that can help you get potential customers to take those next steps toward being actual customers:         

1. Be Clear & Concise

Brevity and clarity are top priorities when writing most marketing pieces, but they’re especially important with CTAs. On mailers, billboards, digital ads, commercials, and similar mediums, space and time are at a premium, which necessitates short and sweet CTAs. 

Avoid vague terms and long verbiage. They should be no more than one or two small sentences. Focus on your desired action and clearly convey what step you want someone to take. Be as specific as possible in as little words as possible, but don’t sacrifice clarity for brevity. While you may be worried about effectively getting your point across, keep in mind that your CTAs will typically have some lead-in copy to help.

2. Construct an Effective Lead-In

With lengthier pieces of content, like web pages, blogs, certain social posts, long commercials, and brochures, you should have more room to build up to your calls to action. This means you can have a quick-hitting CTA, such as BUY NOW or LEARN MORE, as long as you lead up to it with persuasive copy that, say, addresses pain points or includes testimonials to overcome doubt. In the setup, you must do your best to entice the reader or listener to want more, so when they get to the CTA, they won’t be able to resist.

3. Focus on the Benefits to Your Audience

A top marketing writing commandment is to stress a product’s benefits to customers rather than just its features. The size, weight, look, and feel of a product isn’t as important as how it makes the consumer’s life easier. 

When you can, highlight what your audience will gain from taking action. Use language that speaks directly to their interests and needs. For example, “Begin Your Weight Loss Journey Now” is much more effective than “Learn More About Our Diet Plan.” Likewise, “Save Time & Money Starting Today” is more persuasive and meaningful than “Download Our Management Software Now.” 

4. Use Action Verbs

Calls to action require words of action, and more specifically, verbs of action. While not every CTA needs to be an imperative sentence (command or request), most work best that way and demand imperative, or action, verbs. Here are a handful of action verbs to use in your CTAs — from simple and direct to more colorful and dynamic:

• • • • Sign Up
      • Donate
      • Visit
      • Watch
      • Contact
      • Connect
      • Save
      • Read
      • Stock Up
      • Score
      • Request
      • Find

5. Create a Sense of Urgency

Remember when FOMO was a thing? While its use has died down on social media, this fear of missing out is an ongoing reality for most Americans who live in a world of instant information and gratification. When writing for marketing, you should take advantage of this opportunity and use time-sensitive language to encourage your audience to act in an urgent manner. 

By informing them that they may miss a great deal, that a product may run out of stock, or there’s a topical blog that could improve their lives today, you’ll get more people to take that next step. You can also include a countdown timer or inventory counter to add to the persuasion. Here are some words to consider using with your CTAs to help create that sense of urgency:

• • • • Today
      • Now
      • Hurry
      • Don’t Wait
      • Low Inventory
      • Last Chance
      • Offer Ends On…
      • Closing Soon
      • While Supplies Last
      • Limited Time
      • Limited Quantities
      • Immediately
      • Before It’s Too Late
      • Before Time Runs Out

6. Place It Strategically

Calls to action typically come at the end of a pitch, blog, email, ad, or other marketing medium, but there can also be more than one sprinkled strategically throughout one piece of content. (At the same time, in cases like banner ads and email subject lines, it may be the only copy.) Now, you don’t want too many CTAs in one piece; in fact, one should be enough in most cases. However, sometimes you may want to provide different choices or options to lead them down different paths according to their needs. 

Where and how you place your CTAs is crucial to its success. Whether using bold or different sized fonts, contrasting colors, or noticeable buttons, they should be visually distinct so they will stand out and command attention. Above everything else, you want your audience to read or hear your call to action or else they likely won’t know where to go next, and you risk losing their attention and, even worse, their patronage. 

These six keys should help you craft stronger CTAs that attract attention and convince more people to move forward in their journey with you and your brand. At M:7 Agency, getting you more quality leads, and ultimately more customers, is one of the ways we help businesses grow. Whether it’s more customers, capacity, or capital you need, connect with us today to take the next step toward greater growth!