Calls-to-action (CTAs) are the triggers for your marketing success. If done right, they grab people’s attention and point traffic to offers and help generate leads.

According to Maggie Georgiev, an inbound marketing manager at HubSpot and frequent contributor to various marketing blogs including MarketingProf.com, calls-to-action (CTAs) should be used in each and every one of your marketing tactics:  emails, social media updates, press releases, trade shows. And we 100% agree, with this recommendation.

Here are a few additional thoughts from Maggie and other sources on how to create an effective call-to-action.

Tip #1 – Know What You Want Your Customer to Do: For every marketing tactic, there should be an associated action. Always ask the question “What action do I want my customer to take?” before heading down the production or posting path. For instance, before you produce a marketing video ask yourself what you want viewers to do after watching it?

Tip #2 –  Think Before and Beyond Product Purchase: An effective CTA can lead people in that direction, but a product purchase will seldom follow as a direct result of an isolated marketing tactic. View your marketing as an integrated system that combines different channels and assets.

Tip #3 Good CTA design works: The goal of your call-to-action is to attract the attention of website visitors, and one way to convey its importance is through strategic design.

• Size matters. Make the CTA large enough to stand out without overwhelming the design
• Create contrast to make your CTA pop. Use contrasting colors that are in your general marketing color palette. Avoid using patterns. Use visually different fonts or make certain words might be larger or more emphasized. But, CTA must be easy to read.
• Try unusual shapes.with call-to-action shapes that are rare, asymmetrical, unexpected.
• Point your customers in the right direction with arrows or other directional graphic elements.
• Use color and size to clearly differentiate between multiple calls to action. The most important should be brighter or bigger in size.

Tip #4 Keep Your CTA in Context: Keep in mind that the context of your page will affect click-through rates, so make sure there is a clear connection between your call-to-action and the content around it, on a website or in a brochure or newsletter.

Tip #5. Think Text, Not Graphics: The Eyetrack III study found that in ads, website visitors read more text content than graphical content. Essentially, people looking for information will look for text, not pictures.. While you should focus on your call-to-action text, the raphics will help convey meaning and strengthen the message.

Tip #6 Be Clear: Wording should be clear, specific, and action-oriented. Visitors focus on the words in text ads more than on the graphics. So what makes your copy compelling? “The number one rule,” says Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, Director of MECLABS, “is clarity trumps persuasion.”

Tip #7 Start with Subjects and Verbs: The very first piece of advice in the classic book Writing Tools encourages writers to start sentences with subjects and verbs. In the English language, we read from left to right, and verbs and subjects help us to glean the meaning of a sentence. By not including a verb in the CTA copy, you aren’t prompting readers to take action, which can hurt the clicks from your call-to-action and reduce conversions.

Tip #8 Include Numbers in Your CTA: People do not respond to vague statements. That’s why using data and numbers helps to demonstrate that your message is clear and direct. Numbers can set the right expectations and unambiguous. This technique is successful not only for call-to-action copy, but also for blog post titles (like this one!), press release headlines, and email subject lines.

Tip #9 Don’t Overuse Adverbs: Actually, adverbs are the part of speech that gets the fewest number of shares on Twitter, according to Dan Zarrella’s Science of Social Media research. They are behind adjectives, nouns, and verbs in shareability.

Tip #10 Be Brief, But Not Too Brief (90 – 150 Characters): The standard advice for calls-to-action has been “short and concise.” Don’t write convoluted copy that will take your visitor a long time to read but offer  enough information about the benefits and specifics of your offer. Don’t shorten it for brevity’s sake.

Contributed by Dianne Newton-Shaw, Placemaking Group Account Supervisor