This week, would you like to learn more/read more about rethinking the classic B2B CTA?
I’m as guilty of this as anyone, but when we B2B marketers drop a teaser into the eyeline of our audience, what do we say?
Learn more, read more, download, or something as equally banal.
It’s a call to action we want them to do.
But is that why the audience is engaging with our content?
Is that what they want to do?
Of course, people generally want to read more and learn more; I know I do, but I’m not sure if I want to do that in the middle of a decision about whether something will solve my problem.
Worse, of course, those wonderfully teasey titles or subject lines that say just enough that you need to click. From a marketer’s perspective, they perform if the metric you measure is just clicks or open rates, but we know better than that; we want engagement, and a cheap trick clickbait link doesn’t deliver that as the audience immediately bounces away, feeling marginally pissed off with being duped.
So, my suggestion is to think about the CTA and shift its focus from our “action” to what the audience wants to do.
What will reading more do for them?
What’s their “job to be done” and how will this help?
What’s the outcome for them if they learn more about your product or service?
A call to outcome.
There is behavioral psychology that supports this.
Being a bit more creative gives us the opportunity to appeal to the audience a bit deeper with some nudges—things like social proof, authority, reciprocity, and FOMO.
Even if it’s just “don’t miss out on this free research” it’s more compelling than “download” or “read more”, but it’s even better if the audience could “find out how <this made someone like you more successful>”
Like I say, I’m as guilty of this as anyone, but that’s my 2¢ for this week, a bit of a note to self: how do we move from CTA to something more useful.
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I’m a 3xCMO, now a marketing strategy advisor and podcast host at Rockstar CMO. Although, I’m not a rock star, but a marketing leader, strategist, content marketer, columnist, speaker, industry watcher, and creator of ART (Awareness, Revenue, and Trust) for the companies I work with. But most of all, I am an enthusiastic tea drinker.
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The half-baked thoughts shared on this blog may not reflect those of my employer or clients, and if the topic of this article is interesting or you just want to say hello please get in touch.