Are You Marketing Without A Call-To-Action?
Whether you’ve instructed your audience to “leave an emoji if they were interested”, “click the link in your bio”, “click the link at the end of a message” or “buy now”. If you market your services on social media or online, in some shape or form, you’ve come into contact with CTA’s.
Call-To-Actions lead to many things, but do they actually motivate a purchasing decision?
Well, it depends on the call-to-action.
I want you (dear reader) to think about, ‘what motivated you to buy’ the last time you purchased something. Was it the sign that said ‘CASHIER, THIS WAY’? Were it the arrows on the floor pointing specifically to where the cashier was? Was it the polite man or woman who told you where the cashier was or was it something else?
95% Of All Purchases Are Emotional
When TRBM first came to me, the goal of their One-Page Project was to sell their product through the website. Digging a little deeper, I discovered the true product: a partnership with mechanics who specialized in working with a physical product my client manufactured was what they really wanted to sell.
Why these mechanics? They were losing money daily doing repairs on an inferior product. Within 2–3 weeks of launching the brand, they onboarded 2 of their ideal clients.
If “a CTA is how I’m going to get people to buy from me”, then based on the above experience, an emotional connection is a CTA.
Read: Emotion: The Super Weapon Of Marketing And Advertising
A local sales woman recently went on a rant about “CTA’s”. “Don’t be one of those pages or entrepreneurs who market a lot without giving your audience an opportunity to actually buy from you.”
Is this a real problem or is she missing something?
Read: Why Marketing And Branding Can’t Exist Without Each Other
So The Secret’s Out: Branding Is The Real CTA In Successful Marketing
Salespeople in Trinidad and Tobago bypass branding because they believe “people want to be sold to: asked for the sale”. The result of this cock n bull concept of marketing and sales being bff’s is a lot of hard selling instead of an opportunity for a genuine conversion.
…Ummm, why do we run inside when those ‘big-bag-people’ pass by our homes if we want to be sold to again?
Read: If You Push In Sales, People Resist
Branding is how you avoid being in that situation. Instead of saying “This is what I have for sale”, or “This is absolutely perfect for you”, the prospect sell themselves on what’s unique about you. In non sales terms that means the prospect isn’t going somewhere else for a solution you provide.
Read: Normalize Paying For The Help You Need
I recently wrapped a Fit Test with a representative of The Open Bible School Of Theology — another prospect who wants something more than a website, “but until coming across my brand didn’t know what it was and wasn’t seeing it anywhere else in the market”.
But what about you dear reader. Did the people who became your clients say, “Oh, I hired you because you told me to”?
Now if we’re operating from the perspective that “a proper call-to-action presents an opportunity for our audience to buy from us”, and “marketing without a CTA is leaving money on the table” then in the case of The Open Bible School Of Theology, branding is the real CTA (reducing all traditional forms of CTA’s to components of the main objective), and marketing without it is leaving money on the table.
Locally, traditional CTA’s are defined as call-to-actions that are empty — there’s no connection to the desires and motivations of the target audience; no psychological element. Now that we have clarity of the concept, could something as simple as not informing someone on how to make a purchase turn off a sale? Yes. But we’re querying whether or not it motivates a purchasing decision. And the answer is NO!
Some even argue that they turn your engagement into a sales pitch; it dilutes your message.
Read: Why Your Marketing Doesn’t Always Need a Call-to-Action (CTA)
When your voice is specific, the right person hears it; self-identifies with what you’re saying and reaches out more than likely already pre-sold. And that (dear reader) is what separates someone who shares a lot of value online without a CTA from the person who believes everyone wants to be sold to — a brand. One person understands what drives a desired result and the other doesn’t!
I am the Founder and Visual Brand Strategist at The BrandTUB
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