…you can finish their sentences.
I’m not being cute. I have a point. When writing calls to action, writers tend to use commands:
“Submit”
“Watch our video”
“Sign up for our newsletter”
Or we let being clever massacre being clear:
Those CTAs fail because nobody wants those things.
Joanna from CopyHackers explains this nicely: Your call to action is actually a call to value.
If you want leads to do what you’re asking them to, finish this sentence as though you were them:
I want to ____.
OK: “Sign up for our mailing list!”
Better: “Get exclusive insider tips delivered to my inbox once a week”
OK: “Watch our video”
Better: “See how we’ll save you money”
OK: “Submit”
Better: “Start my free trial”
OK: “Download”
Better: “Get my custom report”
The customer has to actually WANT what your call to action promises.
You need to be so in tune with what they’re hoping to get from the transaction that you can finish their sentences.
Give it a try: Revisit your CTAs and write ’em in the first person. That is, unless you’re allergic to making more money.
*This is my second post for “Short Month”. People sometimes think long posts are the only ones that get shared or offer value. I think that’s hooey, so I’m challenging myself to prove them wrong with a month of posts less than 250 words.
Joel,
Businesses large and small typically don’t realize the hay they can make by simply remembering prospects are seeking them out to help solve a problem they deem worthy of fixing–thus your “I want…”
Whenever I work with a business owner, the preeminent question is always “How do I know which content to share?” followed by “What content is my core customer looking for?”
Answering your “I want …” in addition to “So that I can…” gets them pretty far down the path, but starting it all with “I am…” makes it so much easier for folks tasked with creating such content. (Hat tip to Jon Colman for the above concept.)
RS
Definitely! “I am X, looking for Y, so that I can Z” – smart way to think about it.
Hey Joel,
These are small and simple tweaks but make a huge difference!
Thanks for the reminder on I need to focus more on my copy writing and calls to actions!
Keep up the great work.
Thanks, Mr. Beck! Appreciate that. I’ve got plenty of work to do on my own site!
I love the challenge you’re giving people in this post. You’ve proposed a question that every marketing and executive team should discuss together, and take action on.
I would also add that marketers and execs need to determine exactly what the call the people who do business with them. For the company I’ve been consulting with the past month, I convinced them to stop calling people “customers” and to start calling them “clients”.
Reason being, all of their competitors call them “customers”, but even more importantly, customer = short & transactional while client = long & relational.
Joel, keep challenging marketers like this.
Really good point – words carry weight. My least favourite way to refer to clients/customers? “Consumers”. Shows a “care” disjunct between company and client.
Something to stay mindful of. Thanks, David!
I dig this. Improving headlines, calls to action and button copy has made a huge difference for me in the last few months on simple conversion improvements. So much better than trying to complete complex programming changes!
It’s pretty amazing how much language can influence purchase behaviour. The more I keep learning, the more excited I get.
Whilst I 100% agree with the sentiment, I think you’re missing a major factor in why people end up with the CTA that they do: character limits. Each one of your “Better” suggestions is considerably longer than the alternative, meaning they simply wouldn’t fit into the spaces where you’ll usually see these CTAs.
Good point – but I’d say it depends on context.
In an Adwords ad or tweet? Yeah, you’ll need to be more succinct, definitely – but there are short alternatives that you could slot in as well.
“Add to cart” and “Buy now” are both examples of CTAs both succinct and 1st person.
On a landing page, you’ve got plenty of room to play. You control the elements. Convention on teeny tiny buttons is (thankfully) changing.
I feel like if anything, character limits should breed creativity, not stifle it. How can you turn a bland CTA into a 1st person statement without bleeding over the limit? I’d say it’s not only entirely possible, it’s a fun challenge.
Great post as ever, Joel. Love the short and sweet format with the strong examples.
For whatever reason, this really reminded me of reading your Yelp reviews and laughing my ass off. You should find a way to incorporate them into a post here – they’re well suited to your established style.
Cheers, Cory. The Yelp stuff was a ton of fun; I’ll have to see if there’s a “professional” way to rope it in.
Good post and this line of thinking doesn’t have to be limited to copy either. I once saw an interior decorator increase the CTR from the home page to her blog by renaming the navigation button from “Blog” to “Tips”.
[…] second blog that had me tossing and turning was Joel Klettke’s “You Don’t Really Know Your Audience, Unless,” which is his smart take on the need for businesses to create compelling calls to action. […]
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