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🔊 Calling All Actions - What are CTA’s and how to use them.

In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 202 - Calling All Actions, we wanted to talk about a digital marketing buzzword that'll increase your bottom line - and it's stupid simple.

📞 CTAs - otherwise known as Call To Actions - typically seen as buttons on a website's home page. These lil' buttons tell your users what you want them to do. And they're direct too - no beatin' about the bush when you've got next to no room for additional characters. 

And you know them because you have been clickin' on these little commands for years. They're the buttons that say:

• 📣 Order Here
• 📣 Add to Cart
• 📣 Buy Now
• 📣 Get 15% Off
• 📣 Play Now
• 📣 Subscribe

☎ Yep - those are CTA's - 🤏 small, concise phrases typically displayed on website buttons telling you the next action to take in the buying process. And you should have them on your website, social media, bios, and print materials = because they work.

Creating a solid CTA is both simple and complex - because while we don't have a ton of space to work with, we still need to find the optimal command to get our web traffic to take an action. While it may be tempting to make all your CTAs "BUY FROM ME," there's a bit of strategy (and testing) that goes into them.

📣 1. Be concise and direct

CTA's are concise and tell the user what to do. "Stream here," "Join here," "Sign up here" - it's very clear what the next actions to take are. We want to keep that concept in all of our CTA's. Wish-washy, too long, and mumbled messaging is a CTA-killer. "Maybe if you want to join the newsletter I send out sometimes, you can click here... if you want." 🥺👉👈  

Yeah - that's not going to cut it for a solid CTA. Short. Clear. To the Point. The next step. That's the goal with the CTA.

📣 2. Use action-oriented verbs

Do this. Stop that. Click here. Subscribe there. Buy this. Add that to cart. Each CTA should include a verb - because we're calling people to do an action. That's how they work. They command people to take an action. And we, the sheeple, love to be told what to do next. We're conditioned to look for CTA's to guide us through a website's user experience.

📣 3. Highlight benefits

If you look at our revamped sugarcookiemarketing.com website, you can see I marry each of our CTAs with a reason why it's worth clicking the button. "Join the community... to get free bakery marketing help." "Stream the podcast... to learn one marketing tip each Tuesday." The CTA tells them what to do - the supporting text tells them why they'd be stupid not to do it.

📣 4. Make them visually appealing

CTAs are typically associated with buttons - so make them buttons POP, baby girl! If you look at the SCM (sugar cookie marketing) website, you'll see I opted for bright pink buttons in our brand colors + white bolded text. I even added emojis where possible to further draw attention to my money-maker buttons.

📣 5. Keep it simple

CTA's should be single-step commands. "Sign up here" takes them to your newsletter registration form. "Book now" should take them to your booking page. "Add to cart" should immediately add the baked item to carts. Now is not the time to increase your funnel. CTA's are intended to decrease funnel length, and that means a shorter buying process (and less time to second guess whether they should splurge on custom cookies or not).