7 Ways to Improve Your Calls-to-Action for Greater Lead Generation

Think of leads as the Holy Grail. It’s what we’re all looking for.

Calls-to-action are like Indiana Jones; they’ll go through hell and high water to get there and secure the Holy Grail; leads.

The problem is, not all calls-to-action are as efficient and prolific as Dr. Henry Jones. Creating a killer call-to-action that’s both attractive and informative is somewhat of an art form, and knowing how to harness this art form will yield more clicks, conversions, and ultimately, leads for your website.

We’ve put together the following list of seven things to consider that will greatly improve the effectiveness of your calls-to-action as well as your lead generation.

7 Ways to Improve Your Calls-to-Action

1. Master your CTA Copy

While a pretty call-to-action will certainly draw the attention of the eye on your website, it is the written copy that accompanies the graphic that will ultimately determine if a visitor clicks through. To make it even more challenging, you don’t have much time or room, so your content needs to be brief yet powerful.

How do you accomplish this? Verbs.

Verbs convey action, and after all, isn’t this what you’re asking of your visitors? If your CTA copy contains a well placed, powerful verb, you’re conveying to your visitor what you’d like them to do. If you’re not featuring verbs in your calls-to-action copy, you’re not asking your readers to take action, so why would they click through to your landing page? Obviously this will have a negative impact on your lead generation strategy as a whole.

Not surprisingly, according to HubSpot, verbs are the part of speech that generate the most Twitter shares. Coincidence? We think not.

2. Use Numbers

Using numbers and data is a great way of conveying value to your website visitors. So much of what is seen on the web is vague and misleading, therefore including numbers or figures in your calls-to-action immediately provides your visitors with a reason to click through.

A website visitor wants things quick, otherwise they can simply hit the back button and click on the next Google result. Using numbers quickly tells visitors what they’re going to get, how much of it, how much it could be worth to them, etc.

Here at IMPACT, we’ve even noticed this as an effective practice when titling blog posts. When scrolling through our blog analytics in HubSpot, some of our most read blog articles contain a number in the title.

So include numbers, visitors will respond. Here are some ways you can use numbers:

The length of the Ebook, whitepaper or webinar
How much they can save in dollar amount or percentage
Numerical benefit of a resource. Ex: Join over 15,000 other marketers in IMPACT’s social media following

3. The Color of your Calls-to-Action

Believe it not, the color of your calls-to-action can also determine how many clicks it will get.

Check out this nifty little chart we found from SEO Smarty:

10 Ways to Improve Your Calls-to-Action for Greater Lead Generation

This is a helpful chart to refer back to when considering what colors to make a specific call-to-action. Obviously yellow seems like a good choice, seeing as it’s the first color a person sees, however, would red also be a good option.

Despite the fact that it could be associated with debt or danger, is the rise in the visitors heart rate worth the risk? Depending on your industry, it very well could be. Perhaps you’re in the financial industry and you’d like to use a little scare tactic to persuade your visitors to take action. Red would be a great option in this case.

So consider the color scheme of your CTAs. It could be the difference between a click through or a heart attack.

4. Keep Adverbs to a Minimum

Back to the language side of it again, adverbs have a tendency of making copy overly wordy and confusing to the visitor. This is obviously the last thing you want, as it’s important to get your message across quickly with you calls-to-action as we discussed earlier.

There are some instances when adverbs can be helpful, mainly to help shorten a sentence. Replace “with ease” with “easily.” In spots like this, an adverb can actually help make the copy more clear and direct.

5. Keep it Brief

Approach your call-to-action copy much in the same way you approach tweeting. Keep it short, concise and clear.

Try to keep your copy between 90-150 characters. After all, you want your CTA’s to pass the three second test, meaning visitors will understand the value very quickly.

There’s a lot of competition out there for your company, so keep in mind your visitors have plenty of other opportunities to get the information they need if you’re not supplying it to concisely. Don’t dilute your CTA’s with wordy copy that will ultimately lose the visitor and your potential lead.

6. Convey Expertise

Try to avoid using industry specific jargon that may turn off top-of-the-funnel leads and instead focus on conveying expertise and thought leadership.

According to HubSpot’s “The Science of Blogging,” words like “insights” and “analysis” are extremely effective in persuading visitors to click through a call-to-action. It provides both value and a sentiment that the company are experts in the field.

Check out HubSpot’s chart to see what other words have proven to perform well in call-to-action copy.

Don’t be boring in your copy. How many calls-to-action have you seen with “click here”, or “download now” on them? Probably too many. So why would you want your CTA to be just another one in the pile? You wouldn’t. Take a look at another HubSpot chart that details least viewed words on CTAs. If you haven’t already guessed, try to avoid these.

7. Location, location, location!

So…I have to ask. Where are you placing your calls-to-action? Are people even seeing them?

You can have the most amazing copy and graphic, but if it’s not well placed, what are you really accomplishing?

While the sidebar of your pages is prime real estate for a call-to-action, a slideshow is even more effective. For starters, it’s above the fold and the first thing a visitor will see upon visiting your website. A slideshow also enables you to feature multiple calls-to-action, providing visitors with numerous opportunities to click through and convert to a lead.

Tom DiScipio (@TomDiScipio), Director of Project Marketing here at IMPACT, detailed some great call-to-actions in “15 Great Examples of Calls-to-Action for Lead Generation.”