A-Z of Copywriting: C — How to Write Enticing Call to Actions

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Do you tend to rely on, ‘Click here’ or ‘Get in touch’ when you write your Call to Action?

Sometimes, that’s all you need. Especially when writing directly to customers and subscribers.

Usually, though, you need to motivate your reader or website visitor into taking action. Entice them to do what you want them to do. That’s when you need to be more creative about the wording of your CTA.

So, let’s explore how to get those essential CTAs working and turn loiterers into paying customers!

What goal are you trying to achieve?

First, consider what your objective is. Are you after more subscribers to a mailing list or newsletter? Or do you need to boost sales? Perhaps you’ve created a downloadable guide or some valuable information as a free gift prior to them becoming a client.

Whatever it is you want people to do, an irresistible call to action can really help.

For instance, if you’re a wedding photographer you might want to write something like: ‘Congratulations! You’ve 'captured' your forever partner. Now let us capture those precious wedding day moments for you to keep forever!’ … Okay, that’s a bit cheesy, but you get my drift. And then link to your contact details.

Or if you run a Cordon Bleu cookery school, your CTA could be: ‘Harness your inner MasterChef talents! Amaze your guests with superior haute cuisine dishes.’

Keep these tips in mind when writing CTAs:

• Use subjects and verbs to quickly capture people’s understanding of what you’re offering – in other words, tell them to take this action to get that benefit

• Be practical – offer to help people with ‘further insights’, ‘the best options’, ‘we have the answer’, and so on

• Make it easy to act

• Be innovative but keep it simple

• Numbers indicate what you’re offering – how much help, what discount they can have, how much value. For instance: ‘Over 250 customers are already reaping the rewards from our new accounting software…’

• Motivational words help people decide to take the action, like: ‘Take a tour of the property to find your dream home today!’ Or: ‘Book your holiday by ‘date’ and get 20% off!’

• Make it risk free to help with the motivation – use words like: ‘cancel anytime’ and ‘no obligation’

• Keep them short and precise – ideally no more than 150 characters, like a headline

• Be emotive. Tug at the heartstrings. Especially if you’re a charity needing donations

A simple and effective CTA by Spotify

Include secondary CTAs

Your website and other marketing activities will have a primary high-value action that invites – or rather, should entice – the visitor to find out more, buy the product, get a quote.

But it’s unrealistic to only have one CTA. After all, you want to boost your conversion rate! To do that, you need a secondary CTA.

The Spotify example above is a secondary CTA in one of their online ads. The main CTA invited people to download their app and pay for their subscribed version, naturally. Whereas the Spotify web player is free because it has adverts between every few song tracks. The secondary CTA is far more likely to get people through the door, so to speak. And those people may well end up converting into paying customers when they want to listen to ad free music.

People like immediate gratification, so secondary CTAs can be downloadable resources, or access to helpful tools and services. These all offer added value, indicating that your organisation is worth sticking with and helping to keep the user engaged.

Use eye-catching buttons

Using Spotify’s example, write your main CTA action into a button to draw the reader's eyes. Like ‘Download here’, ‘Get a free quote’ or ‘Subscribe here’.

The button can be positioned at the end of the page or midway. Being easy to spot, it's easy to click, too. And easier to convert users into paying customers.

Now you're ready to get creative! Go and motivate your visitors to take the action you want them to do. Have fun writing your Calls to Action and see how effective they are. Measure different types of CTAs to see which ones bring in the most conversions.

Alternatively, you could make your life a whole lot easier by outsourcing your copywriting! Who wants to do that themselves when there are professional copywriters around?

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See what I did there?