Calls To Action Are Needed for Ad Agency New Business

calls to action for ad agency new business

A call to action is an important element for generating inbound leads.

Inbound marketing earns the attention of prospects and makes your agency easy to be found primarily through content. By creating interesting and helpful content, written for a specific audience, you help draw prospects to your site.

Website traffic is very important. It’s the initial step, but you don’t want prospects to just read your content, you want to ignite engagement with them. To do this you must spend time developing a strong and clear call-to-action (CTA).

According to some studies, over half of website visitors leave within 15 seconds. For a landing page, you have less than 5 seconds. Every call to action must immediately answer two primary questions:

  1. What do you want prospects to do?
  2. Why should they do it?

First, what do you want prospects to do?

A call to action provides focus for your website and gives direction to your visitors for what you want them to do next. A lot of businesses and agency websites don’t doing this.

70% of websites lack any call to action. Small Biz Trends

A lot of agencies are getting this wrong. They outline their services, showcase their work but their weak or nonexistent calls to action are costing them leads.

I’ve reviewed hundreds of agency websites from a new business perspective. That’s part of what I do. Most fail to give prospects a clear direction on what to do next other than to contact info@youragency.com. They’re missing new business opportunities because they give little or no attention to creating a clear call to action of what they want their prospects to do next.

Your website visitors are looking for information and they’re looking for help. They’re researching ways to work with you. But, your readers busy and they don’t have the time to figure out what you want them to do as a first step. An effective CTA will eliminate the guesswork.

Secondly, why should they do it?

Answering the next question should emphasize the benefits. What is in it for them? What is their takeaway? How does this next step make their job easier?

Calls to action such as “Call for a free consultation” or “Sign up for our newsletter” doesn’t motivate your readers. The words “free consultation” has come to mean “sales pitch,” and “signing up for your newsletter” is giving you permission to sell stuff. Greg Digneo

The focus changes from the action itself to what the visitor gains from taking the action. Lead with benefits instead of your credentials and capabilities.

Here are a few additional tips for effective CTAs:

  • Spend the majority of your writing time creating an appealing CTA headline. It’s that important.
  • Calls to action should be short and straight to the point. The best CTA is usually the simplest.
  • Using social proof, testimonials, case studies, etc, near your call to action can increase conversion rates by 68.7 %.
  • Keep your calls to action above the fold. Website visitors don’t scroll down, they spend 80% of their time above the fold.
  • Be sure to use your social network such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn for your calls-to-action.
  • I recommend to my clients that they use a dedicated landing pages that identifies an initial step for a new client. It could be a brand audit or market audit, a discovery workshop. If you’re looking to generate leads, a landing page is the critical tool you need to find success.
  • Remember to make the next step for prospects as painless as possible. If your sign-up request is to long, 86% of visitors will quickly leave a page. A key mistake is asking visitors for too much personal info too soon.
  • Instead of using info@youragency.com or the use of an inquiry form, allow prospects to connect directly with a person.

An additional resource that you might find helpful is Hubspot’s 101 Example of Effective Calls-To-Action

photo credit: call to action via photopin (license)

About Michael Gass

Consultant | Trainer | Author | Speaker

Since 2007, he has been pioneering the use of social media, inbound and content marketing strategies specifically for agency new business.

He is the founder of Fuel Lines Business Development, LLC, a firm which provides business development training and consulting services to advertising, digital, media and PR agencies.

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