A call to action is one of the most important things in a Marketers toolbox. Unfortunately there is a constant battle with designers and branding people about how to use them. Marketers need to have them off-balance or standout so that they attract attention and generate a response. Designers and branding professionals want balance and tend to throw a fit when you make them design something that breaks the balance of the design.
The trick is to find the right balance of how to use one to maximize the response from your audience while also not breaking branding guidelines.
First let’s define what a call to action is.
A call to action is a verbal, visual or readable command that tells or tries to get a target to respond or react. It can be a submissive mention to donate via displaying a phone number to call in, telling someone where to click, what to type in or where to find a link to donate with your voice in a video or on a podcast, or even trying to bait a click or a vote with a button, or to cause a reaction like tears, raising hands or depression so you can then generate a response.
So why would I do a post about calls to action? Over the last few years I’ve been dealing with a lot of new designers enterting the workforce and a serious lack of understanding on what the purpose of calls to action (CTAs) are.
Designers and branding people want everything to balance or fit within a guideline and to “look pretty or nice” since that is what they’re trained to do. Unfortunately that can hurt conversions and revenue. Marketers are measured on results (at least good ones are) which is why we need functionality. I’ll get more into this in a bit.
This post will walk you through some of the theories on how and why calls to action work. But before we do that, I have a couple of fun questions, since it is the holiday season and we all need a break…and because I got stuck on YouTube watching cat videos today. [Read more…] about Just For Fun, Here’s How Calls to Action Work
