Social media marketing is a powerful strategy for building a relevant audience. While using social media for your business may be quite a bit different than other strategies, it can be incredibly effective when done right.
Far too many businesses and entrepreneurs denounce the value of social media marketing before truly using it to its full potential.
While social media certainly offers a great way to increase brand awareness and connect with your target audience, it can do much more than that. When used correctly, social media drives sales.
The key to getting conversions from social media is quite simple: you need to ask for them.
That’s right, adding the right call to action to your social media posts will improve your conversion rate and maximize your social media marketing efforts.
Here’s what you need to know about using CTAs for your social media posts.
What is a CTA?
While you likely already use them on your website, it’s worth clarifying what a call to action is. A call to action encourages someone to take a specific action that you are looking for. The ultimate conversion that businesses want is a sale, but that’s not the only CTA that’s beneficial.
There are many ways to use CTAs on social media. A few helpful ways to leverage CTAs include:
- Asking for engagement (leave a comment telling us your biggest challenge to accomplish X)
- Asking for a follow (follow our account for more helpful tips about X)
- Visiting the website (click the link to head to our full blog post)
- Scheduling a call (click the link to schedule a meeting to learn more about how we can help you with X)
- Making a purchase
Why Use CTAs on Social Media?
Far too often, brands and businesses fail to use CTAs on social media. They may be concerned about coming across as too salary or pushy. While using the wrong CTAs can have a negative effect, asking your audience to do something is the best way to encourage them to do so.
Adding a relevant CTA to your post increases its efficacy. Many people will take an action they may not have otherwise done. In the end, this will help boost your ROI and conversions.
Choose One CTA Per Post
Each post should only have one CTA. Don’t ask your audience to read more, subscribe to your newsletter, and buy this product all in one post. Multiple CTAs only confuse people and muddle your end goal.
What action are you looking to get from this post? Think carefully about the most fitting CTA for the post. Pick one and stick with it. Using one CTA will be the most direct and effective way to increase the conversion rate of your posts.
Make Your CTA Clear
Your audience should not be confused as to what you want them to do. Make your CTA as clear as possible. Your audience should know exactly what to do and what will happen when they follow the CTA. For example, if your CTA is to click a link to book an appointment, the link should take them to the booking page, not anywhere else.
Align Your CTA with Your Sales Funnel
Different social media posts may be geared toward different segments of your audience. Your CTA should align with the segment you are targeting. The CTA you put on a social media post should match the target audience’s location in your sales funnel.
For example, if you are targeting someone already familiar with your brand, then asking them to schedule a call makes sense. However, asking a brand new prospect to schedule a call likely won’t be too effective. Instead, you should ask new prospects to “learn more” or “view services.”
Make it Easy
Your CTA should not be complex or difficult. Keep it easy and fast for your audience to complete. The less friction your action has, the more people will do it. Reduce the number of clicks it takes or the actions it requires.
Consider the example for booking an appointment. If you just tell them to head to your website and book an appointment, people won’t do it. That requires them to go find your website and look around for the booking page, etc. Instead, include a link right to the booking page so they can book the appointment directly from your post.
Avoid Cliche Marketing Terms
If your CTA comes across as salesy or tacky, people won’t want to do it. Avoid using over-used marketing terms. Some of the over-hyped terms to avoid include:
- Free
- Strategy session
- Groundbreaking
- Thought leader
- Growth hacking
Keep your CTA genuine. Of course, include a promise of worth. Just don’t overdo it with overused phrases.
Include Action Words
While you want to avoid overused marketing lingo, you do want to include action words. Action words promote action, they get people moving. Use compelling words that prompt a specific action like:
- Learn
- Join
- Shop
- Order
- Download
- etc
What’s In It For Them?
Why should your audience follow your CTA? What’s in it for them? Don’t just demand people to sign up for something, tell them why they should. Provide value, and tell people what’s in it for them. Share the benefits they will get by downloading your white paper or scheduling a call. Let your audience know that by signing up for your newsletter they get access to X resources. Go a step further and articulate how the resource will help them.
Variety
You should be posting a variety of valuable content on social media, which means you should also use a variety of CTAs. The CTA of every single post should not be “buy now” or “read more”. The CTA should match the content and the goal of the content, so it should naturally vary. If you have a few posts in a row with the same goal, try varying the specific words and phrases you use.
Test Different CTAs
There are no objective “best” CTA. what works best depends on your industry and audience. Creating CTA’s is an art and it’s different to every audience and industry. Even if you are looking for the same end goal, there are different ways to ask for it.
Experiment with different CTAs. Test which CTAs get the best results. Try different versions and see which ones bring in better results. Track and measure the number of conversions so you have empirical data to use in the future.
Use Buttons
When possible, make your CTA a clickable button. Buttons work far better than hyperlinks, as CampaignMonitor found that CTA buttons increased the clickthrough rate by 28%. Buttons are larger and stand out from the regular text, they basically scream “click me”.
