In this episode of Do This Not That, Jay dives into the importance of call-to-action (CTA) buttons in marketing campaigns. He explains why the specific wording you use on CTA buttons can greatly impact performance, and shares tips for optimizing your buttons to drive more clicks and conversions. Listeners can expect to learn easy ways to improve their CTAs.
Main Discussion Points:
– Using words that focus on the benefit to the recipient rather than words about the action itself can increase CTA click-through rates by over 20%
– CTAs should highlight what’s in it for the prospect or customer by clearly stating the offer or benefit
– Avoid generic verbs like “submit”, “download”, “register” – these are overused and don’t compel action
– Restate the offer in your CTA language to reinforce the benefit
– CTAs can be full sentences or phrases, not just single words
– Use AI tools like ChatGPT to easily generate new CTA language
Transcript
Foreign welcome to do this not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.
You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. And we are back.
Do this, not that. We're doing this today. I'm excited.
Today we're going to talk about something that can have a big impact on your marketing programs, whether they're social posts, your landing page, emails, anything. And what we're focusing in on is something that you think is probably not important, but it is. And that is our call to action buttons.
Now somewhere out there like, oh my God, I'm tuning out, it's so boring. We're going to talk about buttons. Yes.
And the reason is, is that what we say in these buttons on these buttons can have a huge, huge impact on the outcome of the performance of whatever marketing is that you're doing. And let me tell you where this all really stems from. Let's say you get an email, for example.
You open up the email and if you're a business marketer, you're promoting some sort of checklist that you've come up with, the seven things all HR pros should know.
You have a checklist or you are a consumer marketer and you have some, you know, some big, big sale that you're promoting 20% off, whatever, the person opens up the email and they're interested and then they see the button, the rectangular button that you got. And on the business side with that checklist, what do you put on that button? You want somebody to do what you want them to download.
So what do you do? You write the word download on the button because that's what you want them to do. And the consumer side, you got this 20% off sale.
What do you want them to do? You want them to buy now, right? You, that's what you want them to do. But the theme and what works is not what you want them to do.
It's what's in it for me, the recipient. What's in it for me, the recipient.
When you state the benefit to the recipient, rather than it being a commitment that they're making, when you state the benefit in the call to action button, the words, and I'll give you some examples, you see on average over a 20% increase in click through rate. When you state the benefit instead of it being a commitment. So, for example, let's say you're promoting a webinar.
Instead of writing the word register on that button, you say, I want in. You say, save my spot. What sounds better to you? Register or save my spot. Register or I want in. Right? You get excited, and it's in the subconscious.
It's not like you see the button, you're like, oh, yeah, this is awesome. I want in. No, nobody says that. You're moving very fast, but when you see it, you're like, oh, yeah, I feel good about this. I do want in.
And it's not feeling a commitment. It's like, it's a benefit to me. And instead of buy now, it says, get my savings. Get my 20% off. Save now.
We make the mistake to think that the call to action buttons have to be one word or even two words. Your call to action button could be a sentence. Your call to action button could be as long as you want it to be.
And the more descriptive you are, the more that you restate the offer that you are trying to give to somebody, the more that they are inclined to interact with it. We not only see this inside of an email, but when.
Now, they leave the email and they go to the destination page, and they're filling out the form, or they're buying, or they're subscribing, or they're doing whatever, and they go down to the bottom, and there's a button there to close the deal.
Now, that button on the landing page on your website, the final button for them to do the thing, download the thing, buy the thing, subscribe to thing.
If it says submit, I want you to stop listening to this podcast immediately, and I want you to call whoever it is in your company, and if it's you, then you handle it. We cannot use the word submit. That word is weird. I don't know why that has entered the marketing vernacular.
And we think it is normal to tell every prospect that we're interacting with to submit. Right? That is just odd. So please, no submit.
But more importantly, in the word submit, which is obviously the worst word in the marketing universe, what you want to do is you want to restate the offer again.
So if you are promoting an insurance product and what you're trying to promote is three free quotes on some insurance product, the button where it's supposed to say submit. Instead of saying submit, you're going to write, get my three free quotes. You are literally restating the offer. You're restating the offer.
You're telling the person you are going to get exactly what you're interested in by clicking this button right here. So when we are thinking about call to action buttons or the submission button, don't just think any word will be fine.
Because it's not just another word. It is the closing argument that you are making to get the sale, to get the thing over the finish line.
One of the best uses of ChatGPT of AI, if you go to ChatGPT, which if you don't know how to do that, you go to Google, type in chatgpt, click the link, it's a hundred percent free to use. One of the absolute easiest and best uses for ChatGPT is this. You go to ChatGPT and you write this.
You write rewrite this call to action button using the word download. But without saying download.
You literally tell it, I'm using this call to action button download or I'm using this call to action button buy now or register. And then you tell it to not use that word and give you suggestions for other call to action buttons.
And when you tell it, I, I want to know other call to action buttons about downloading, but please do not use the word download. It will give you 15 options of things like get my checklist or I want it now or access content.
It is a fantastic use of ChatGPT, but the key piece of that is telling ChatGPT to say it without saying that keyword, without saying download, without saying register, without saying buy now. So that's an easy way to create these call to action buttons.
But I'm stressing please consider the buttons because they make a huge, huge difference in performance. Now we get to the segment of the podcast called since you didn't ask. Whenever I talk on this podcast it gets so crazy.
I get so worked up, as if I'm like in an argument with somebody. I'm talking about myself. But anyway, since you didn't ask, is where I talk about things that have nothing to do with anything.
Just whatever I'm doing in my life or going on. And I feel like I need to get it out of my system. This is so ridiculous. Last night I'm in the supermarket. I live in South Florida. We go to Publix.
That's the name of our supermarket. I'm in Publix. I'm shopping now. I like ice cream. I should be eating like the fake ice cream, the stuff that's not real ice cream. But I like ice cream.
I get both. Okay, who cares? But I don't understand something. When I go to the cereal aisle in the supermarket. If I want a certain flavor of Cheerios, it's there.
I just go and I put it in my car. I know it's going to be there because they have every cereal combination, whatever.
But when I go to get ice cream, and like, Ben and Jerry's has a zillion flavors, when I go to get ice cream, I go to open up the freezer thing, and I was laughing to myself. In my mind, I'm hoping that the flavor that I want is in there. Like, I like fish food. That's a flavor.
It's got, like, chocolate and caramel and all this stuff. But every time I open the freezer, I'm like, I really hope fish food is in there. Because maybe you don't know this.
They don't have all the flavors there all the time. They very rarely do. And it's like you open up the freezer and you're, like, searching, like, do they have it?
And it's like I'm playing a scratch off to find the flavor that, like, there has to be, like, a basic grouping of flavors that should always be there. And then they could add on a few other randoms. But I don't understand why it can't function like the cereal aisle, which is.
It seems very, like, got it under control. Genuinely bothers me. Oh, and then the other piece. Oh, this is so random. Like, you listen, like, what is wrong with it?
So then the other thing that bothers me is, is that I also like cookies. So I like cookie dough. I like putting them in the oven. I like cookies. Right. I don't understand something.
When you're in the ice cream aisle, there's 4,000 flavors and combinations of ice cream. You can't even, like, imagine how they come up with so many different versions of different ice cream stuff.
And then when you go to get cookie dough, I don't know if you know this, but there's two. You can get cookie dough for sugar cookies, and then you can get chocolate chip cookies, and once in a while, like M M's or something.
But there's like two, maybe three different versions of cookie dough. And I don't understand why the ice cream people figured it out, the cereal people figured out.
But why aren't there like 37 different versions of cookie dough? Because there has to be a population of people like me that want to try different types of cookie dough. I don't understand why it's so limited.
Why am I so angry about cookie dough? I don't know all right, gone off the rails as usual. So today what do we talk about? Call to action. Buttons are really important.
You got to focus on them. And we got to solve this cookie dough and ice cream dilemma.
I don't know if somebody from that industry is listening but I hope you could work this out. And thanks so much for checking out do this. Not that you did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.
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