Why Your Call To Action Isn't Working

On most occasions its not the ad but the Call to Action so today I hope to shed some light on Why your call to action isnt working.

As previously mentioned in my other videos many businesses are guilty of sending out masses of irrelevant email campaigns that can end up causing more damage than good.

But there are just as many people that also fail to produce effective call to actions on these email campaigns and also on subsequent marketing material. There’s a lot of advice out there about Calls to Actions – where to place them, how to write them, what kind of verbs to use. They’ll also tell you how to match the right CTA with the right channel to optimise your click-through-rate. And that’s great. But despite the pile of stats, there’s one fact most marketing people don’t like to talk: making people click isn’t enough.

Most Call to actions don’t produce results not because they use the wrong verb, but because they aren’t followed up properly. They invite your leads to take action, but immediately fail to repay them for the effort. You could have a 100% click-through-rate on an advert, but if those clicks don’t lead anywhere interesting or keep the conversation going, you’ll end up with nothing to show for that perfectly crafted CTA and that’s what I want to talk about : how agencies consistently waste marketing opportunities, and how you can do things better.

For most agencies, the problem can be boiled down to this: they don’t know how to turn a marketing interaction into a sales conversation. Time and again, I see agencies producing compelling content or ads that really build interest and momentum. But then using that momentum to send prospects…to visit their website. Now, this might not seem like a problem.

Getting people to visit your website is surely a good thing, right?

But most websites simply don’t provide what a lead is looking for instantly when they click and we only have 8 seconds to get their attention. By the nature of our business The average estate and lettings site is cluttered, difficult to navigate and, crucially, leaves prospects with no one to talk to. While some industries can get away with just providing information on their websites, estate and lettings prospects generally want a proper conversation, to discuss their needs in detail and establish an actual relationship. The best case scenario is they give you their email or send you a message. Maybe they even call the phones but a lot of your website traffic is going to be outside of office hours, and that means they’ll be left waiting on a response for hours, either talking to an answering machine or simply giving up and looking elsewhere.

That window of opportunity is brief, and you need to consolidate a prospect’s attention as soon as you get it. So bringing a lead to your website only to have them unable to make direct contact is like junk mail, a waste of a great opportunity.

Here’s my advice: you need to close the gap between your content or advertising and an actual human interaction. The faster you can do this, the more chance there is of building a relationship and ultimately cementing a deal. This is why people are starting to use Call to actions which link directly to a phone call. But the problem with this approach is it still only works during office hours. If you miss the call, you’ve paid for the ad but likely lost out on the business. So ultimately, agencies need a way of responding to leads immediately at any time of day and that’s where a good Landing Pages and Customer Experience Management systems come in. A number of targeted landing pages to your different clients needs can give them what they are looking for instantly. Now link that with A CXM system you can automate replies, so that as soon as a lead reaches out or clicks through they receive a personalised message in response. This ensures they don’t feel they’re being ignored, and makes them far more likely to want to continue the conversation when your salespeople are actually available.

On top of that you can now start to nurture you prospect customer to give them the perfect customer journey within your agency, automatically now by closing the gap between interactions, you're essentially repaying the lead for acting in the way you’ve compelled them to - and making good on the promise of your Call to action.

So in Conclusion By using over complicated websites instead of lead generation focused landing pages you run the risk of alienating more prospects than not. So yes, you can improve your conversions by tinkering with your Call to actions and ensuring they’re right for the channel they appear on. But the fastest way to improve your results isn’t simply increasing the number of clicks you get, it’s ensuring that you have a system in place that guarantees customers won’t be disappointed when they click.