Information is available everywhere. In fact, there’s too much of it. But most of it is pretty hard to understand. As a brand that wants to help your audience, it’s up to you to break a concept down into understandable pieces and uncover insights that are truly specific to your readers.
But there’s more to it. In a world plagued with shortened attention spans, simply discovering insights isn’t enough. The goal is to help your readers understand the what, why and how of the insight, in the least number of words. Once you establish yourself as a reliable source of information for the niche you’ve picked, a dedicated audience isn’t too far.
This is where your brand comes in. Now that you’ve attracted your audience, and retained their attention, what can you do to get them from passive viewers to active doers?
The answer: Use effective CTAs.
A CTA, short for call-to-action, is what gets your audience to perform a specific action towards your brand. It’s essentially your one and only chance to leave a lasting impression, before your audience takes the final call.
While it may seem simple enough, writing an effective CTA is rather complex. Here’s a short checklist that you can use to check if your CTAs are effective:
Do you have different CTAs for different media?
CTAs are not one-size fits all. Similar to social media platforms, every medium whether it be social, website or blog has a different purpose. So, every piece of content will try to invoke a different action. Using a generalized CTA, therefore, would not do much for your audience. Only when your audience encounters a CTA that matches their purpose of visiting the webpage, will they be prompted to perform the given action.
Is your CTA appropriate for the nature of your product?
The product you’re offering plays a great role in the CTA for your audience. If, for example, you’re selling a B2B product to an expert audience, it can prove beneficial to plug in product features relevant to stakeholders in your CTA. On the other hand, if you’re selling to a B2C audience, you would most likely appeal to their emotions, and therefore write a CTA that points out how the product would make them feel.
Does your CTA match your audience’s expectations?
It’s impossible to grip your audience without knowing what they’re thinking in the first place. This is why it’s important to craft CTAs according to where your audience is in the decision-making process.
For example, if you notice a larger portion of your audience clicks onto your website, rather than your product catalog, it's likely that they want to know more about your brand before diving into the purchase. Here, the goal would be to write a CTA that convinces them to go through your product catalog after clicking onto your website.
While gauging your audience may sound easy, it’s tricky to stay in line.
One common mistake to avoid is pushing your audience to make a decision too early. If they’re still at the exploratory stage, there’s no point in directly jumping into the sale. Rather, you’d benefit from showcasing the alternatives, and why they’re not the right option, before ending with a CTA that prompts them to evaluate choices accordingly.