Call to Action (CTA) (Glossary Definition)

What is a call to action or CTA as it's usually abbreviated? A call to action is some kind of graphical elements, sometimes it's even a text-based element, whose purpose is to take you from one type of digital asset to a conversion path or a landing page. It's inspiring you to do some kind of action.

A lot of times you'll see these calls to action that almost look like a graphical banner that's within a Web site, like at the bottom of a blog post or the bottom of a website page. Sometimes you'll see a square call to action or a long vertical type of call to action in the sidebar of the website or the sidebar of a blog post. Sometimes you'll see a call to action graphical banner in an email. Many times you'll see something that looks like a call to action in a social media post, regardless of whether it's organic social media or sponsored or paid social media.

Converting Visitors to Leads

Again, the entire purpose of the call to action is to take a visitor from one particular context, one particular place, and move them over to another place that's usually a landing page. You're trying to convert that visitor into a lead or get them to go through a reconversion where you know who they are. They're converting again and accelerating the sales cycle.

A call to action at the basic level is to inspire somebody to take action. The reason why this is super important is a lot of times people put together website pages or blog posts where they give a bunch of information and then leave that person dangling at the end. The person has no idea what they're supposed to do. Make it very clear. Make it explicit about what you want them to do and what you recommend they do next.

If you're using the right kind of software, the right tools, platform, and technology, you should be able to measure the effectiveness of that call to action. You should be able to test that call to action to see if you can improve its effectiveness.

The Bottom Line

In other words, you can look at a click-through rate and see how many people click on that call to action relative to the number of people that see the website page. You can look at the number of clicks, and you can look at the ultimate conversion rate when you send that person to a landing page of how well that CTA, call to action, does in generating the ultimate conversion.

Do you use calls to action (CTAs) on your website? Share your thoughts in the section for comments below.  

To learn more about calls to action (CTA), enroll now in our free 7-day eCourse: Go-to-Market Strategy 101 for B2B SaaS Startups and Scaleups.