Last Updated on June 19, 2019 by Paula
The right call to action at the right time is a must if you want to have a good return on investment, keep building your list, and influence your audience with your products and/or services.
There are numerous places to put a strong call to action; let’s look at a few.
Above the Fold
When you see advice to place your CTA “above the fold,” this involves knowing what your audience sees when they click on your email, website, or other form of content. It is important when determining where “above the fold” (which is the time before your audience must scroll or swipe) to place your CTA.
If you’re going to use an above the fold CTA consider if you are targeting warm traffic or cold traffic. For warm traffic, a CTA to sign up for your an email list freebie is a good bet as this is a good way for new visitors to get to know you. A CTA to book an appointment would be for warm traffic as they already are familiar with your work and if they’re returning to your website may already be ready to work with you.
At the Bottom
Most people are used to scrolling today. Therefore, always putting a CTA at the bottom of your copy is a great way to ensure that your audience, who reads everything easily, locates the “what to do next” button, (i.e. your CTA button). You don’t want to make it hard for people who read and engage with your content to figure out what they should do next.
Below the Fold
Whenever you choose to place a CTA below the fold, it’s important that you use directional cues to point to the CTA. You can do this with content, images, and even actual arrows. This works great when you’re using a storyboard or infographic to explain to your audience the information they need to know in order to make a choice to work with you.
Elsewhere
You can put CTAs anyplace and in multiple places.
For example, you can put a sign-up form under your blog posts so that if people want more information about that topic or your blog in general, they can get it just because they signed up.
You can also put them on the sidebar of your site, within a blog post, and so forth.
Putting them in multiple places allows your audience time to get to know you through your content so that they won’t miss out.
The biggest keys to “where to place your CTA” is to understand how your audience reads your content, where they are in their decision-making process, and what type of product, service, or information you want them to act upon.
You learn all of this by testing different types of CTAs to find out what works best with your audience. You start with an educated guess and move from there to make sure your CTAs work as well as they should.
