As a concept, CTA is broad, as it can apply at all stages of marketing. It can, for example, be part of the content on a website, appear in a blog post or in a post on social media.
How often do you not encounter prompts from companies that want you to sign up for their newsletter, click into their site or follow their page on social media? That is a CTA. In other words, CTAs turn readers and visitors into potential customers. The potential customer is encouraged to take a specific action, and it is the effectiveness of these prompts that a company can measure itself by.
Good CTAs can come in many forms, but ultimately they are prompts. Therefore, you need to be mindful of how you phrase them linguistically. Be brief and concise so the recipient can quickly understand the message and respond to it. Use the imperative form, so your audience is in no doubt that this is a prompt.
In your CTA, you must also make sure that the potential customer is in no doubt about what value they will get. Conversely, you must also not oversell yourself and what your CTA refers to.
It is also important that the CTAs are clear to your audience. If your CTA is a button on your website, it is crucial that it is clear and placed in a spot where the eyes naturally fall on the page. It must be neither unclear nor a nuisance to the user experience on your site.
CTAs are particularly important in connection with SEO and advertising. In connection with SEO, good prompts in your meta descriptions and title tags can be decisive in ensuring that your page is the one visited rather than your competitors'.
When it comes to advertising, broadly the same principles apply. What you prompt for must align with the action you want the recipient to take.
