Your CTA or Mine? Dating Your Customers to Win More Sales
If you think about it, your marketing content is a lot like a courtship. There’s that first encounter, where you’re getting to know each other. They discover your blog and decide to check you out. Your visitors find you attractive, but they’re not sure you’re “the one” yet. Then, as your prospects get to know you better and read more of your content, they start to fall more in love with you. Until finally, there’s that big day when you sign the bottom line and make it legal. You’ve committed to a buyer-seller relationship.
But a lot of businesses get left at the altar. Here’s why.
Before a buyer becomes your customer, you’ve got to get past that first date—that first piece of content that your prospect reads. They find your blog post, they read your content, and the date ends. They’ve finished the article, and…what? You say good-night? Do you propose? Do you give them a call the next day? If it’s a bad date, maybe you never talk to them again.
After that first piece of content, that first date, you need a plan for the next step in your relationship. A lot of companies pop the question right away—they ask for the sale. Others just stop communicating, and the relationship ends unceremoniously. Neither option is a good idea.
If you want things to go to the next stage with your prospective buyer, you’d better follow up with them, or get them to follow up. Otherwise, you’ll never get hitched! You need to take them to that next step in your relationshp, and you do that with a call to action, or CTA.
Hey, Give Me a Call to Action Sometime
A call to action is simple—it’s anything that tells your audience what to do next. It leads your prospects to the next step in becoming a customer, whether it’s subscribing to your blog, or downloading a whitepaper, or requesting a demo. But if you don’t tell them what to do next, they won’t do anything. And then they’re gone.
You’d be surprised how many companies don’t have any CTAs on their content—whether it’s a blog article, a web page, an ebook, or anything else. They assume their audience will be so excited about the content they just read, that the prospects will go and do the next thing. Whatever that is.
My guess is, most of the time even the company doesn’t know what the next thing is. And so there’s no CTA.
Every piece of marketing content should have a call to action. Otherwise, your content can’t do anything for you.
Other companies do give a call to action—they’re popping the question every chance they get. So they ask for the sale after the first blog post. They ask for the sale in the follow-up email when you subscribe to the blog. They ask for the sale on the About Us page.
If you’re following the ABCs of sales, remember: there’s a reason Alec Baldwin’s character was the bad guy in Glengarry Glen Ross.
Your CTA or Mine?
So what’s the right kind of CTA? Because sometimes you should ask for the sale. After all, you’ve got to get around to it at some point, right?
Think about the buyer’s journey and where your audience will be in that journey when they read a piece of content. Will they be at the end of the buyer’s journey? Then it makes sense to give them a “Request a Demo” CTA, or even to ask for the sale. Will they be at the beginning of the buyer’s journey? If so, just lead them to the next step and take it slower.
Want more help making your marketing content more effective? Gimme a call sometime—let’s see how I can help you get more results.