Fatal Mistakes to Avoid With Your Calls-To-Action

Some of the biggest aspects of an inbound marketing campaign are your calls-to-action. You can have a fully optimized and customer attracting landing page, but if you can't get traffic to see these landing pages, what's the point?

That is where the calls-to-action come in to play. These are the first line of fire. They are the initial force that drives leads to your landing pages. You truly need killer calls-to-action in order to have success with your lead generation campaigns!

As usual, with something as helpful as CTA's, there is always room for error. Sometimes overall design and placement of your calls-to-action can actually hurt your lead generation, and drive leads away from your site. Luckily enough, this post will run through some of the most common mistakes that can be made with a call-to-action, and explain how you can avoid these mistakes in the future of your lead generation campaigns!

Interested in implementing more powerful, actionable CTAs that generate leads? Contact IMPACT and learn how we can help!

Don't Promise Things You Can't Deliver

When leads first see your calls-to-action, you obviously want to get them to go on to your landing pages. So how do you do that? You use words like free and awesome and super! But don't flat out lie. Don't say "click here to read the best apple-pie making ebook in the world!" because odds are it's probably not the best apple-pie ebook. And leads know this as well, so they are even more likely to not even take a second look at your call-to-action.

Bottom line: Don't brag about things you shouldn't brag about. It worsens your credibility and makes traffic frustrated.

Keep The Same Language In Your Calls-To-Action as Landing Pages

What could even be worse than the first mistake, is wasting the leads that actually clicked on your CTA. What I mean is that you should use that same words and language on your landing pages as the text in your calls-to-action. By changing this, you can confuse your traffic, making them think they are getting something different from what they clicked on.

Don't Make Calls-To-Action Misfits

What you ideally want to do is get your CTA's to look just like the rest of your site; using the same branding as your company. If you have a mellow green color scheme for your site, a giant red CTA just looks terrible. People will see your CTA's even if they blend in.

Don't get me wrong, some contrast is good. You need something to make your CTA pop out from the rest of your site, just don't make things so overly tacky that people are distracted from the rest of the webpage.

More Words is Not Always Better

Regardless of how good your graphic designer is, you can't have calls-to-action without some sort of text on them. You have to tell your traffic what it is they're clicking on! But you absolutely should not fill up the whole CTA with content on the offer. That's what the landing page is for. Use large, simple words that are short and to the point. Go into depth later when they click on the CTA. Some of the best calls-to-action don't even use proper grammar; just one word sentences that get their point across.

Place Your Calls-To-Action Where They Are Appropriate

If your CTA's are misplaced, it counter-productive for both you and your leads. Keep top of the funnel offers like ebooks and webinars on your blog and your informational webpages, because the viewers of that page will most likely be wanting something along the same lines when they need more information.

Place bottom of the funnel offers like free trials on your contact us page and your pricing page. These are much more appropriate for these pages, and your traffic will be much more appreciative.

Now go fix your CTA's and start generating more qualified, sales-ready leads. Also, be sure to check out our free ebook, "How an Inbound Marketing Agency Does Lead Generation" for more expert tips on how you can generate more leads from your website.