What’s the most important part of any blog post or landing page on your business site?

If you said “the title!” you may be right. But once you’ve piqued a reader’s curiosity with an enticing headline and they’ve arrived on your page, you’ll want to make sure they don’t go away empty-handed.

Quality content helps you to build an audience and establish your credentials, but most of the time, the main purpose of your lovely blog posts and landing page content is to encourage your readers to take the next step in their buyer’s journey.

You can make it as easy as possible for them with a clear and irresistible Call to Action (CTA).

What is a CTA?

If you’ve spent any time learning about business blogging, you’ve probably come across the term, but you might not be sure exactly what it means. Here are some examples you’ve probably seen:

Whether it’s a modest blue link in an obvious location or a colourful button demanding your attention, a great Call to Action promises the answer to your reader’s problem (even if they didn’t know they had one) by making a targeted offer they can’t refuse. Or one they’ll at least stop to think about.

Why are CTAs so important?

If you run an e-commerce site, every piece of content you produce is a sales pitch. You’ve identified your customer’s problem, reminded them of what could happen if they don’t take action, explained exactly how your product or service will help them, supported your case with evidence and testimonials, and put their mind at ease with a guarantee. Now it’s time to close the deal.

A bad CTA is the equivalent of a timid salesperson. You’ve already made them interested in what you’re offering, so don’t be afraid to tell them how to get it.

CTAs aren’t only used to make sales, of course. If you’re writing content aimed at readers who are still in their information-gathering phase, help them out by directing them to other pages on your site (or your free e-book) where they can get all the answers they’re looking for, rather than searching elsewhere.

Your CTA is what converts your site visitors into leads. Whether you’re making a sale or increasing your newsletter subscriptions or social media followers, a powerful CTA is what all your content is working towards. In fact, many people write the CTA first and work backwards from there.

The different types of CTA

They may be short, but your Calls to Action need to be just as carefully crafted as the rest of your content, if not more. There’s no one-size-fits-all template when it comes to your CTAs (unless you’re designing a bad website), but here are some ideas to get you started:

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A great CTA should:

Be impossible to miss – whether it’s at the very top or very end of the page (or both), surrounded by a text box, or emphasised with a big red button.

Focus on your reader – make it about them, not about you.

Tell your reader exactly what they need to do – make sure they know exactly what’s involved and make it as easy as possible for them to close the deal.

Use active language – start your CTA and link text with active verbs (“doing words”) to encourage Action: download, sign up, watch, contact etc.

Reassert and reassure – briefly remind your reader why they should take action and reassure them of your guarantee.

A great CTA should not:

Be pushy – you want to build a relationship, not turn people away.

Be desperate – why are you suddenly pitching an unrelated product? Keep your CTAs on topic.

Be unassertive – don’t say “if”, say “when”.

Be overlong – you’ve already made your sales pitch, so keep your CTA short and to the point.

Be over-complicated – don’t clutter your CTA with distracting images, animations or content that won’t load on some users’ devices (such as Flash).

You can see how well your Calls to Action are performing using Google Analytics. By comparing their click-through rates, you can see which CTAs your customers are most responsive to and which ones need some work.

What’s next?

Now you know how to write the perfect Call to Action, it’s time to work backwards from that starting point and make sure the rest of your content is strong enough to support it.

Check out our guide to writing a business blog and start converting those leads.

(Did you spot the Call to Action?)