How To Make Sure Your Calls To Action Aren’t Costing You Money

Kristen Westcott
5 min readJun 28, 2022

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Calls to action (CTA) are such an important feature of copywriting and you’ll see them everywhere!

But there’s a little more to them than just asking someone to ‘click here’!

You need to think about what you’re asking them to do, where the CTA will go, why you need them to click, where it will take them and of course, you need to think about whether it will work on your ideal client!

So let’s dive a bit deeper into CTAs…more specifically how to write some that are going to make a splash!

CHECKING OUT VS SALES PAGE

When it comes to CTA, more often than not I see people putting ‘buy now’ or ‘click here’. However, unless you’re using these on your actual shopping cart page, those might not do the trick.

Especially if you’re using these on a sales page! Because there is a difference between a sales page and a checkout cart page and the CTA you use, needs to be adjusted depending on what page they’re being used on!

The CTA on a sales page needs to let the reader know the outcome of clicking. So CTA like ‘Yes! I’m ready to double my income’ or ‘Let’s level up my sales strategy!’ is going to be much more effective!

Remember, the job of the sales page CTA is to get them through to the cart! So you’ll need to put a little more into it than just ‘click here’. Your CTA should tell them what they’re going to get or why it’s exciting! It needs to entice them in!

CHANGE UP THOSE CTAS

One key thing to bear in mind when writing your CTA (especially for your sales page) is that they don’t have to permanently stay the same!

Don’t be afraid to change them up if they don’t seem to be working.

You could even test them out on things like social media posts first to determine which CTA your specific audience responds to the best. You can then use this to determine what CTA is going to get more clicks on your sales page!

If you’re using an evergreen funnel you could duplicate the funnel and split test the sales page CTAs.

PITCHING YOUR CTA

The positioning of your CTA is almost as important as the actual CTA itself!

Unfortunately, they don’t just act as magic buttons that work all on their own (although, I wish they did!).

What I mean by this is that you can’t just pop your CTA anywhere on your page and expect it to automatically get loads of clicks.

You need to make sure you set out for success. To do this you need to build up to the moment that leads to them clicking on the button, whether this is a paragraph or a couple of killer sentences get them excited to press the button before the button is even presented to them!

A great way to do this is to make sure that you’re really highlighting the benefits that your potential customer will experience by clicking that button before you present the button. Then use the button text to amplify the benefits they’ll receive!

The trick is to get them excited about what they stand to gain by snapping up your offer so that they can’t resist clicking that CTA button.

CLARITY OVER CREATIVITY

It’s always tempting to throw in a really fun and creative CTA. However, you need to be careful if you’re doing this.

Creativity is great and it’s really important to have personality infused into your copy to create a distinctive brand voice but not at the expense of confusing your audience. So when you’re writing your CTA make sure to prioritize clarity for your audience.

There needs to be no confusion around what you expect them to do or how they can go about doing it. Because let’s be honest, the last thing you want is for your reader be all excited about your offer and then have no idea how to grab it for themselves!

That being said, it doesn’t mean you can’t stay on brand with your CTA. Tap into the language or phrases that you would usually use like any terms of endearment. Just make sure it’s clear what you’re asking!

KEEP IT RELEVANT

The final thing I want to talk about is making sure the CTA you use is relevant!

This might seem like a very obvious thing to say however, you would be surprised at how many sales pages I’ve read, or emails that come through, that talk about one topic and then at the end have a CTA for a completely different thing!

As we already know from the ‘Pitching your CTA’ section, you need to build up to a CTA to have the most impact.

This means everything you write before or after the CTA needs to be relevant to what you’re going to ask them to do. It can’t just come out of the blue or be completely different from what you were just talking about!

Another top tip is to try to keep to one CTA per piece of copy. Have one specific goal in mind and make sure everything you write revolves around achieving that! Don’t have 7 different CTA for 7 different services in one piece of copy. It’s too much and they won’t work!

So, before you sit down to write your next CTA make sure it’s concise, relevant and enticing!

Because CTA are powerful things (but only if you use them correctly!) that can really elevate your sales page and help increase your conversion rate!

Want more tips on how to boost your sales page? Check out my Sales Page Sanity Saver! It contains everything you need to sort out before you start writing your sales page!

SALES PAGE SANITY SAVER

originally published at www.kristenwestcott.com/blog

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Kristen Westcott
Kristen Westcott

Written by Kristen Westcott

I help online coaches, OBMs & other service providers get aligned with their business vision and sell their offers without using shame-based marketing tactics.

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