3 call to action examples (and why they work)

Category: Data and analytics

Ah, the humble call to action. It’s arguably the be-all and end-all of marketing. It’s the point where customer and prospect engagement is won or lost. And it’s the moment where marketers discover if their content has roused the prospect enough to take the next step in their buying journey.

We’ve talked before about creating the perfect call to action (check out our call to action examples for automotive and care home businesses). But we concluded that the perfect call to action (CTA) really doesn’t exist. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula for creating CTAs. It’s just a case of understanding the customer buying journey as closely as possible and making sure you pick the right CTA for the right moment.

That being said, the placement of your CTAs can make or break their success, too. Bury them somewhere deep on your webpage and no one will see them. Place them too early on the page, and they may be forgotten, as people scroll past to look at the rest of your page content.

With this in mind, here are three call to action examples and why we think their placement may work well for you.

1. The landing page ‘above the fold’

Depending on the purpose of your webpage, having a call to action smack bang at the top may be the best way to drive interactions. If the sole purpose of the page is to drive sign-ups, bookings, or downloads of a piece of content, making that intention clear right at the top may be the best approach.

Landing page 'above the fold' call to action graphic.

 

Of course, you need to exercise caution with this. If you’re not sure the prospect is ready to take action at this stage, a call to action right at the top may put them off. They may need time to digest the content further down your page first before they can make a next-step decision.

If they’ve gone past your CTA to do this, they may not scroll back up.

Equally, if you know the prospect is ready to take action – perhaps because they’ve passed through a number of ‘qualifier’ pages or content pieces first – then a clear ‘get to the point’ CTA at the top could be the best approach.

Top tip: Mediahawk integrates seamlessly with Optimizely, a great A/B testing tool for marketers. It means you can test a CTA placement at the top of your landing page versus one further down.

2. The blog post ‘closer’

Blog posts should always have a call to action – or multiple calls to action, depending on the subject matter.

Blog post 'closer' call to action example.

 

 

For example, if you’re a care home and your blog post talks about preparing a loved one for their move-in day, you may want to include a closing call to action to download a move-in day checklist.

Or if you’re a car dealer and your blog post covers top tips for buying an electric vehicle, you may want to end with a call to action that encourages readers to visit your showroom and book a test drive.

The key here is to make a blog post call to action as relevant to the blog post content as possible. If you’re writing about a very top-level, beginner subject, don’t hit people with a sales-focused call to action. It will be too early in their journey. Choose a ‘softer’, more education-based call to action instead – for example, an e-book download.

Ultimately, the closing call to action is there to begin the relationship-building process with prospects. So make it bold, make it compelling and make it relevant.

Top tip: Use the Mediahawk Optimizely integration to check which blog post calls to action generate the best results. You may find that softer calls to action – such as those that encourage e-book downloads or email sign-ups – perform better than more sales-focused calls to action, like ‘buy now’ or ‘speak to our team’.

3. The sidebar ‘teaser’

If you have the option to add sidebar or tabbed calls to action on your website, these can be a great way to keep your CTAs constantly in view across your website.

Sidebar 'teaser' call to action example.

For care homes, your number one goal across your website will likely be driving move-in enquiries. So why not have a sticky call-to-action tab on the side of your web pages encouraging visitors to ‘book a tour’ or ‘reserve a room’?

And for automotive businesses, you may want to encourage test drives, service bookings and valuation enquiries with your sidebar CTAs.

The placement of these types of CTA in a sidebar means they are prominent for the duration of a prospect’s session on your website. Whenever the prospect decides they want to take action, those buttons are right there in their eye-line.

Top tip: When you use the Optimizely integration with Mediahawk, you can test the performance of your sidebar CTAs, too. If you find sales-focused CTAs aren’t hitting the spot, try mixing them up with some softer ones too – like a care home brochure download or a link to a car configurator.

Marketing analytics tools that can help with CTA placement

When it comes to placing calls to action on your website, always take a user-first approach. The customer journey should be your guide, telling you at what point prospects make certain decisions and, therefore, how prominent certain calls to action should be.

If there’s any doubt, put them to the test. You can always change CTAs and their positions until you find the best performing combinations.

Mediahawk’s integration with Optimizely is perfect for helping you make these decisions.

Call-to-action tracking with ease

For complete certainty, the call-to-action tracking feature that’s built into Mediahawk allows you to easily track your call to action events for 100% marketing attribution.

What’s more, the call-to-action tracking feature helps you to:

  • See a full view of the customer journey from source to enquiry – whatever channels they come through
  • Report in granular detail on the user experience from start to finish and identify weak points for improvement
  • Invest more into channels that are driving the best quality leads and optimise under-performing ones
  • Earmark campaign budgets with greater certainty, thanks to deeper customer journey insights and data from call to action tracking

Creating and placing calls to action needn’t be led by guesswork any more. With marketing analytics software like Mediahawk, you can make informed decisions about CTAs and deliver the results you need for your campaigns.

About the author - Natalia Selby

Marketing Executive at Mediahawk, with 20 years experience in analytics and content management.

Track all calls to action on your website.
Know which calls to action work best

Want to track non-linear customer journeys through form fills, live chats, PPC ad clicks, and more? Learn more about the call to action tracking feature that’s built right into Mediahawk.

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