Developing an effective call to action (CTA) was the hot topic with our clients last week. While it didn’t create quite the same buzz as last week’s episode of Scandal…seriously…how crazy was that? Or Matt Cutts latest Google spam master video (watch it here…he answers the all important question..the one top of mind for all of SEO copywriters…where do you buy your t-shirts?) it did seem to be on our senior industry clients’ hot list.
- What is a Call to Action?
- How do we know what an effective senior care call to action should be?
- How many different CTAs do we need to make our senior care content convert?
Lots of good questions came our way. And you know we love CTA strategy!
First off, let’s tackle the definition of a call to action. In simplest terms, it is the action you want someone to take at each stage of the campaign or on each page of the site. For these to be successful, you need to have clear goals for each page or each campaign. Once you know what those are it is easier to design an effective call to action.
So if one of your goals in establishing a blog is to build your enewsletter ranks, a CTA for your blog could be to encourage readers to sign up. One interesting method may be to share the results of an ongoing clinical trial, such as the pacemaker trials with Alzheimer’s patients, and ask them to sign up for your enews to stay on top of trial updates and results.
The trick is to be specific and creative as you show readers “WIIFM” – what’s in it for me. Why should they sign up for your newsletter? Why do they want one more email filling up their cluttered Inbox? WIIFM. Show them the value you will bring to them if they do. For our Alzheimer’s pacemaker trial example above, the value is obvious. Families of a loved one living with dementia are, understandably, always looking for and praying for news of a cure or treatment. I know. I was one of those families.
A few other important points we’ve picked up as we’ve developed CTAs and CTA chains:
- Think about where families are in the senior care decision journey if they have landed on that particular page on your site. What CTA you choose should center around what is of benefit to them at that particular stage.
- Don’t go overboard and have too many CTAs on a page. That visual clutter will prevent any of them from being effective.
- Your home page is the only exception to the above. Since families can reach your home page in a variety of ways, we usually recommend two or three CTAs for the home page. One geared toward early decision journey visitors and one for those further in the process.
- Your site CTAs should increase in engagement as you go up the chain. At the beginning, your call to action shouldn’t require as much of a commitment from families as they do later on down the road.
- What are our ultimate goals for families? For senior care, we know it is to call to arrange a tour/visit or in-home assessment. Our CTA chain must build to that action.
- Another thing to consider is what happens after the tour. Will they visit your site again as they are evaluating everyone they have met with in person? Very likely. Do you have good reviews online with third party sources? How about testimonials from families on your Facebook page? Peer to peer (P2P) recommendations are the most powerful tool you can leverage. Make sure you have CTAs that lead them to read those.
One final recommendation is to build strong content and tools that you can use for your CTAs. A senior care guide. Great articles on relevant topics like giving up the keys or starting THE conversation. According to a Roper Public Affairs survey, 70% of content readers feel more positive about a company who provides them with educational content. They believe those companies are interested in building a relationship with them. And we know that relationship is key to earning a new client or a new resident.
We would love to help you develop your CTA chain or to create content you can use for your CTAs. Email us at: info@TheSeniorCareSpecialists.com or let us know you would like some Help Developing CTAs that Engage.