I’m pretty sure (and this is sad to admit) that before I sat down in this e-marketing course I hadn’t actually heard the term “call to action” be used before. And now it’s all that I can think about. Having a strong call to action, whether it be on one of your advertisements or on your website, is one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in this course. What’s the point of even having a website if you don’t have some sort of call to action that guides your visitors to take an action that will help your business? One of the most frustrating (albeit interesting) experiences has been trying to run an AdWords campaign for a client but not being able to measure conversion in any way. Why? Because the landing pages that we have to work with do not invite the visitor to take the next step. And so, when you’ve put all that time and money into trying to get their attention, it just feels unrewarding when nothing comes from it!

I see a strong call to action as the perfect way of aligning your online marketing goals with the needs of the client. You’re providing them with the next step, the solution to their need, and in turn you are achieving your objective – whether that’s to have them sign up for a newsletter, subscribe to your site, or give you call. That call to action gives people a way to further connect with you and to me, that’s what e-marketing is all about. Connection. It’s your way of reaching out to your next potential customer to connect with them – so why not make it as obvious and easy as possible for them to get that invitation and respond to you.

Being new to all of this – I had to find out what it takes to make a strong call to action and what things I should avoid doing. I just love it when I find neat tips laid out attractively in an infographic so I thought I’d share it with you (you can also check it out here).

And this:

But from everything I’ve read…I really think the most important thing is to make your call to action OBVIOUS! If they don’t see it, it’s not calling out to them. If I look at a webpage and have to spend more than a second squinting and searching for some invitation to do something next…there’s a problem and an opportunity to improve.

What about you? What do you think makes a good call to action?