What Is Your Call To Action?

Why a call to action?
In the Internet marketing world, there are certain elements that a marketing campaign just can’t go without… an actual purpose for running the campaign—there’s no such thing as a random campaign, exposure, targeted traffic, proper testing, analytics, quality content, an understanding of different buyer personas (competitive, spontaneous, methodical, humanistic, etc.), and, (but not limited to) a primary and secondary call to action.

Primary Call to Action
The primary call to action is the main reason that you’ve lured traffic to your site, Web page, blog, etc. in the first place. Good marketers don’t just jam the purchase of their product of service down the visitor’s throat—they offer quality content that supports their offer, often times for free!

For instance, check out the image displayed with this post; it’s a mock up of a fictitious Jewelry site’s home page. You’ll notice the subheading, which is the primary call to action… “Get a free guide on our hottest topics”—each guide is a different aspect or approach to ultimately the same thing, but entices different buyer personas in different ways. *We’ll talk about different buyer personas in a later post.

The purpose for doing this is to get quality content in the visitor’s hand. It’s offered to them for free to entice them with the store’s jewelry, without any commitment on the consumer’s part. This not only exposes the great products of the store, but also helps build trust! Consumers will remember who helped them the most.

*Please note: calls to action can be many different things, perhaps downloadable brochures (like the ones in the image), free educational content, podcasts, videos, articles, etc.

Secondary Call to Action
The secondary call to action is used to help compliment the efforts of building trust, and also acts as a fail safe should the primary call to action not entice the consumer. Essentially, the secondary call to action is a second shot at enticing and/or convincing consumers to ‘take action’ on your site!—although, of course consumers may utilize both calls to action.

What about…?
Now you may be thinking, you’ve seen successful sites simply cutting to the chase and offering the option of buying their product or service, or perhaps you’ve even seen sites merely explaining the specifics of their business, without any offer or primary/secondary call to action. What’s important to remember is that not all sites are running campaigns, or even selling something.

Sites that may just offer their product or service are often major businesses that need no introduction—consumers simply come to the site to buy—without needing to be enticed. But, also keep in mind that the Web page you’ve seen just may not be the actual campaign page. Campaign Web pages are often separate from the main home page.

Additionally, sites that don’t sell anything, such as a local dentist’s site, and the like, are created for the purpose of exposure, as well as displaying details of their practice and contact info. However, the details on contacting them should be in the form of a call to action. If you’re not seeing it in this way, it may simply be due to inexperience on the part of the site owner.

All in all, a call to action is the entire reason for creating a campaign (but isn't limited to campaigns), Web page, blog, and so on. They can be used to get the consumer’s e-mail address or other contact info., to get consumers on the phone with the company for further enticement, simple brand or new product exposure, etc. The reasons for your call to action may be debatable, but having one is not—you have to have a call to action.