Inbound Marketing Made Easy: Part 4 – Utilizing Calls-to-Action

This is the fourth of a six-part series we’re providing for those who are planning to get started with inbound marketing in 2013..

Last week I wrote about creating effective landing pages. . . but how do you get people to visit your landing pages? You use calls-to-action!

A call-to-action (CTA) is an image or text that prompts visitors to take action, such as subscribe to a newsletter, view a webinar, or request an ebook or product demo.

CTAs should direct people to landing pages, where you can collect visitors’ contact information in exchange for a valuable marketing offer. In that sense, an effective CTA results in more leads and conversions for your website.

Examples of calls-to-action

Why should you create calls-to-action?

The goal of a call-to-action is to drive traffic to a landing page. This path — from a click on a CTA to a landing page — illustrates the much desired process of lead generation. In order to increase visitor-to-lead conversion opportunities, you need to create a lot of calls-to-action and distribute them across your website and blog.

You should maintain a mix of CTAs that span across the different stages of yuour sales cycle, so that there is “something for everyone.” The more CTAs you build, the more opportunities you create to convert visitors into leads.

How to create and optimize calls-to-action

For the power that calls-to-action have, they are very easy to create. The format of the CTAs can vary from simple hyperlinked text, to screenshots with overlayed text, to elegant banners and pop-up overlays. You can create your CTAs in HTML/CSS, or Photoshop, or image creation program. . . in fact you can use Powerpoint to create very professional-looking CTAs.

Marketers who are striving to continually increase their CTA click-through and conversion rates are constantly conducting A/B tests to determine the best design for their CTAs. Every design element I’ve mentioned can and should be tested for your audience(s).

Here is a 6-Step Call to Action Creation Guide.

Want to learn more?

Join us on December 13th for our end-of-year webinar on lead generation for 2013. We’re including a unique fast-start program for inbound marketing that we’ve developed. Don’t miss this 45-minute free webinar!