How To Turn Marketing Into Action With A Great CTA

Even the best business site is nothing without good marketing. Here is a guide on how to turn your marketing tactics into reader interactions.
Marketing is formally defined as “the promoting and selling of products and services through research and advertising”. While this explains what marketing is, it fails to give us a heads up on why it is done. Marketing of your products or services should lead to purchases, sign-ups, subscriptions or information exchange; without this end result marketing as a whole would be pointless.
Enter the call to action (CTA)…
The content, images and files on your site are all (hopefully) leading to one ultimate action: to sell. Your marketing strategies should be developed with this endgame in mind, and aim to encourage customer interaction with a call to action button. Marketers have spent years trying to perfect the call to action and below are expert tips on how to make this research work for you, and have your customers hitting the call to action button.
Color:
According to Emma, an email marketing company, 85% of people reportedly said that color is the main reason they buy a product. Color processes rapidly in our brains and each hue holds a unique response.
For example:
Orange- Promotes immediate action and is great if you are wanting people to sign up or join.
Green- Represents relaxation because it is the easiest color for our eyes to process.
Yellow- Used as an attention grabber to promote positive feelings and low level anxiety to move people to action.
Blue- Evokes security and trust as the world’s most popular favorite color.
Red-  Increases urgency and energy for limited time offers and sales.
By using an appropriately shaded color your call to action can increase in effectiveness and clicks. Consider using A/B testing to find the perfect tint for your CTA.
Shape & Size:
Most sites feature rectangular buttons but it’s not a rule to live by. Experiment with different sized buttons to find what works for your site. Apple recommends that buttons be at least 44×44 pixels for best practice, and Emma recommends that CTAs be round, big, tappable and tested. The human brain seeks to avoid sharp corners so rounded corners are preferable. Bigger is better, especially for mobile optimization, but don’t let your CTA overwhelm your entire page.
Active Verb:
Words like “click here” are overused and produce underwhelming results. By using an active verb and a first person narrative conversion rates can increase by up to 90%. Words like “start” or “download” will increase clicks and attention. Don’t be afraid to get creative with action phrases as long as they are relatively short. Include urgency words like ‘now’ and ‘today’ for best results.
Placement:  
Placement is a tricky one. You want to place your CTA in the most logical place and above the fold. Eye tracking studies have shown that our eyes will naturally find faces and look where the person in the image is looking. So the most logical place to put a call to action button is in the direction that the eyes of your images are looking.
Pick two positions that you think the CTA will work well at and try them both out with A/B testing. Look for reasons why one is more effective than the other – you might be surprised.
For more information about the psychology behind a clickable call to action visit this site.
*Note: Pay attention to Emma’s awesome call to action when you get there.

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