So off you go, you put together a website, brochure or flyer describing your great product or service. You go live, distribute the materials, but you don’t get much of a response? What’s going wrong?
Too often in my corporate and consulting career, I have noticed that a simple thing called “call to action” gets forgotten about. It seems so obvious to the business owner or product managers what great features their product has and why people should buy it, but they forget to spell out to the customer what to do next. This is a real shame as it is giving away an opportunity to convert customer interest into sales.
It is relatively easy to fix this, but you have to remember to do this whenever you are creating marketing materials and content. The secret it: Put yourself into the customer’s shoes. What is it you want them to do? Is this obvious to the customer?
Do you want them to contact you? Do you want them to sign up to your e-newsletter? Do you want them to buy a product? Whatever it is, make sure you are saying clearly what the customer should do next.
Here are a few tips for creating a strong “call to action”:
- Spell it out!
Say what it is you want the customer to do next.
- Make sure the “call to action” is easily visible
on the marketing material and no effort is required to find your contact details.
- Use the “KISS” rule
(“Keep it short and simple!”)
- Use quirky wording
to get the customer’s attention such as “Try it, you’ll love it!”.
- Create a sense of urgency
(“Sign up for free now!”).
- Create “call to action” buttons
on your website such as “Start your free trial!”, “Contact us!” or “Get a free quote!”.
- Use bold font and bright colours
to attract attention if it fits your style.
- Mention the “call to action” in as many places as it seems appropriate. You have to give your potential clients several opportunities
to act along the journey through your marketing materials. They might use one of them.
Another good example is social media posts . Often, small and also bigger companies post truly interesting content on their social media accounts – after all, that’s what you are meant to do on social media, right? So they post news about their company, information about new products or industry news, but they forget to create a link to their own website, thereby missing the opportunity to let potential customers find out more about their products and possibly even buy them.
You could even simply include your business phone number in the post, if you want to be called about a product or service and say “We’d love to talk to you about how (our solution) can help you with (customer problem). Please call us on (insert phone number)!”.
Don’t give away opportunities to convert customer interest into sales anymore. Remember to put yourself into your customer’s shoes and literally tell them what to do next . I am sure you will find that this easy fix will make a difference to your sales.
I hope you found this blog post helpful and would be glad to hear about your experience with making tweaks to wording on your marketing materials and what impact this has had. Leave a comment below or email me at julia@shootsmarketing.com.au ! (Of course I had to include a call to action to prove my point.)