There’s no question that sex sells, but you can’t really plaster images of <censored>, curvy solid bodies and scantily clad you-know-whatses across every page of your site.
…I suppose that depends on what you’re selling.
Ideally, your calls to action should be something entirely relevant to your audience. Sex sells best when the product (…or service?) relates specifically to sex or something physical. When it comes to other products and services, you want a call to action that makes sense for what you’re peddling.
Everything you do should have a call to action – every site page, every blog post, ever piece of content you publish. You need to specifically tell your audience what you want them to do after they’ve engaged your content. If you don’t, you’re leaving it up to them to decide what’s next.
And in most cases, without a call to action, they just split.
So what goes into a sexy call to action that your audience can’t resist? Here are five tips to make your call to action as effective as possible.
Without the soft gleam of electric sex…
Choose Your Goal
An effective call to action always starts with understanding the goal of the content. Are you aiming for more sign-ups to a local event? More eBook downloads? Social shares? Likes on Facebook? Ticket purchases?
Write that call to action based entirely on the most critical goal of a page, because sometimes you’ll have more than one goal or action. To make that conversion as easy as possible, always include an obvious link with the call to action, or a phone number, so they can take that desired action with virtually no hassle.
Keep your Sales Funnel in Mind
You should consider the context in which you’re going to use your call to action once you’ve identified the goal. Essentially – where is the prospect in relation to the sales cycle/funnel? It doesn’t make sense to present a “Buy now” call to action on your home page for an expensive product. You have to warm them up first with things like “request a demo” or “learn more” that link to internal pages – the next phase in your sales cycle.
Structure your content and calls to action with this in mind, just remember that thanks to search engines indexing every page of your site – and outside sites linking to internal pages – you never know where someone will enter your site.
Write with Brevity
You should always craft a call to action so that it is short and actionable.
One line.
One and Done.
One shot one kill.
If you cram multiple calls into a single piece your conversion rates will plummet. Long, wordy calls to action will do the same thing because they tend to blend into the rest of the content. Keep it punchy and directed toward one action
“Click Here to Register for Free”, “Get Your Free Account Today”, “Buy These Damn Widgets Now”
Place your Call to Action Strategically
Like many aspects of marketing, the placement of certain pieces has been researched to death. Through conversion optimization case studies and heat map research we’ve discovered that people scan pages online in an F pattern on arrival before digging into the content.
Those case studies have also proven that putting a call to action front and center, above the fold, and near the top right is likely to have a lot more impact and higher conversion rates.
If your design doesn’t allow for that, that’s OK. It won’t ruin your conversion rates. Just place your call to action where it will be seen right before or right after the content is read, and where it won’t interfere with the flow of content on your page.
Test. Test. Test Again
There’s nothing more important than testing your call to action, unless you’re someone who celebrates mediocrity. Just because you get what you feel is a great conversion rate the first time around, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t test.
A few tweaks to the call to action position or the color of text/buttons surrounding the call to action could be enough to double or even triple conversion rates. Sometimes you can increase conversion as much as 10 fold without even changing the text you use.
You’ll only know if you do A/B testing to find out which message, position or design variations work best with the audience that comes to your site. Take what you learn and adjust your overall strategy for future content creation.
Not sure where to begin? Need some additional tips or an audit on your own sales funnel? Contact us today for a free estimate and we’ll help you get the most of your site traffic.
