While it might feel challenging or overwhelming to build your brand by leveraging social media platforms, no one can deny their prominence and importance for connecting with people instantly. The presence of 2 billion active users makes social media a powerful platform for reaching out to potential customers.
Both new businesses and well-established brands use social media marketing to grow their followings and generate leads by motivating them to take action. That is what makes CTAs a crucial part of the marketing strategy of your brand.
A well-crafted CTA does wonders for any social media post. It drives more visitors to the website, generates sales, and increases conversion rates. Whether you want your followers to download a PDF file, sign up for a trial, or visit your landing page, CTAs are crucial.
If you’re struggling to craft effective CTAs for social media marketing, here are 5 tips that can help.
What is a Call to Action?
A call to action or CTA is the text that motivates and encourages social media users to “take action.” This action typically refers to a specific action digital marketers want their audience to take depending on the content or services offered.
CTAs are placed strategically. For instance, if a marketer wants to include a CTA in a blog post on their real estate site, they will do so at the end of the post because readers who read all the way through are likely to take further action.
A CTA can also appear on social media, ad popups, or landing pages. When it comes to writing a CTA, it’s crucial to see things from the audience’s perspective. The key to making CTAs effective and influential enough is to create them as an “offer” buyers or users are looking for.
How to Craft Effective CTAs for Social Media Marketing
1. Choose persuasive verbs and adjectives
The latest social media marketing report from Social Media Examiners mentioned that more than 66 percent of businesses and startups use social media to get more leads, but that’s not the only big advantage you get from social media. These platforms help you generate qualified leads via advanced targeting, and promoting your content on your social media profiles requires the use of “compelling and persuasive” action words.
This calls for the use of clear, strong, and instructive verbs to persuade readers to take the action you want. Some good examples are:
- Start your free trial
- Get a free quote now
- Post a request for free
- Shop the best deals
- Try the app FREE
Image: ZipRecruiter
2. Create catchy hooks
Social media is a place where people are moving fast. If something doesn’t catch someone’s attention right away, they’re gonna scroll. How might we tackle CTAs in a fast-moving context like this?
Answering the “What is in it for me?” question before it’s even asked, is extremely important. This is something most prospects want to know right off the bat before they give up on looking for the answer. Making a CTA that aligns with your reader’s needs is key to reaping great results.
It’s important to delineate where exactly your readers are in their journey before you tailor your CTA to their needs. What this means is that you may need to avoid asking your prospects to buy a product if they are just gathering information, or ask your prospects to read another post if they are looking to buy a product.
It is only when you’ve fully grasped the audience’s perspective that you may safely make the next move by crafting an effective CTA.
3. Create a sense of urgency
This is one way to entice users or readers to respond to your call to action. Using CTAs like “Get in touch with us today” or “Call us now” put a limit on time and imply urgency and immediacy. Another way to make these urgent CTAs even more alluring is by adding phrases that show how rewarding it is to take up on the offer. For example:
“Register today — Claim your spot in the best UX Design workshop before registration closes!”
These types of CTAs work because they take advantage of the compelling effect of exclusivity.
4. Incorporate your brand voice
People always prefer to engage with a brand they recognize. Whether you’re a startup or an established business, creating and raising brand awareness is one of your top goals, and CTAs offer the best opportunity to reflect your brand voice.
A digital platform like a public social media site can help you put your brand in front of your target audience quickly and easily, and CTAs can be a creative tool that helps bring out your brand personality and voice. Every CTA you use is an extension of your brand’s DNA, and should fit the style and flow of your brand. If your brand identity is “professional, chic, and upscale”, you should invest enough time crafting CTAs that rock a professional and chic tone.
Take for instance these two CTAs: “Shop our spring collection” vs. “Head to our site to snatch yours now!”. Both CTAs push the audience to take the same action, but each has a different feel. Weaving your brand’s personality into your CTAs can help create a lasting impression on your customers and help them love your brand more.
5. Prioritize clear over clever
Simplicity makes the most impact!
An audience pool can consist of many segments, and it’s impossible to target everyone at once with a single CTA. Sticking to a straightforward message geared to one segment of your audience at a time can help with making your CTAs more effective.
Although it’s important to be creative with CTAs, what’s even more important is clarity and purpose. Ditch difficult jargon and resist overusing wacky wordplay. Make sure you’re delivering a clear message. Sometimes, the shorter your CTA, the greater the impact it creates because more people will be able to understand and respond to it.
Summing Up
The 4 keywords that sum of this article are persuade, catch, urgent, brand, clear. Ultimately, your CTA should “call” the audience to buy a product or respond in a way you want, otherwise it has failed as a call-to-action.
Following this tried and tested recipe for success will help you as a brand or marketer in crafting effective CTAs for the right audience. Once you begin to implement these strategies, you may start to see how quickly you achieve the KPIs linked to the actions you want your customers to take.
Let Us Help You
Here at Snappymob, we are all-rounders at product development. That means we provide end-to-end services from research and design down to development and growth strategy.
Check out some of our work, read about our services, or talk to us about your next big project by clicking on that snappy CTA button below!