How to Get Leads Online with Website CTA Best Practices

How do you generate leads online? Most business owners and executives respond by stating that blogging, social media, and email lists are common ways they obtain online leads. While blogging, social media, and email lists can all be great methods for generating leads, the call to action (CTA) is arguably the most important part of all. Interested prospects can reject an offer in a heartbeat if the messaging doesn’t resonate with them.

Using CTAs to Attract Leads Online

What do you think of when you picture CTAs? A big button that says, “Click Here”, “Subscribe”, “Download Now”, or “Sign up”. CTAs are so much more than just a button you place on a web page or an ad with the hopes of attracting qualified leads. They’re your first opportunity to turn a prospect into a lead by telling them about your offer and how it will improve their lives or business.

Your audience is becoming more aware of generic CTA language. This has resulted in lower conversion rates from common CTA trigger words. To create a successful online lead generation strategy your CTAs need to reflect the sophistication and knowledge of leads online. That means you need to say goodbye to generic CTAs and start building ones that convey the value of your offers to the audience.

Anchor-Text CTAs

The vast majority of blog post and web page CTAs are included at the end of the post or page content. These are called end-of-post CTAs and they average a 0.5 – 1.5% conversion rate. Not great. According to Hubspot, anchor-text CTAs can increase conversion rates by a whopping 121%! Now there’s a great number.

An anchor-text CTA is included in the body of the copy. Whether it’s a blog post, web page, or email, anchor-text CTAs are typically full-sentence lines of copy that tell the prospects two things:

1. What’s being offered
2. What benefit the prospect can experience

Anchor-text CTAs work for several reasons. First, they can be strategically placed within copy so the offer feels more organic and less intrusive than banner ads, sidebar CTAs, and pop-ups. Second, many prospects bounce from a page before they even get to the halfway point of your copy, let alone the very bottom of a blog post, web page, or email. A smartly-placed anchor-text CTA can help reduce the chances that potential leads won’t ever read your CTA and accept your offer. Third, highly qualified leads online will be grateful for a CTA that provides an offer relevant to the content they’re currently reading.

CTA Placement

Yes, anchor-text CTAs can post huge conversion numbers, but that doesn’t mean they’re always the answer. In cases where it doesn’t make sense to incorporate anchor-text CTAs, there are a variety of other options to choose from.

Types of CTAs

• Sidebar – This was the standard for most web pages and blogs for many years. While it is still heavily used on many web pages, it’s mainly fallen from use in blogs.
• End-of-post – These CTAs are still heavily used and can often be used in combination with anchor-text CTAs.
• Pop-ups – As annoying as pop-ups can be, they’re still pretty effective. The top 10% of high performing pop-ups produced an average conversion rate of 9.28%.
• Sliders and bars – Slider and bar CTAs are essentially sleeker versions of pop-ups. The idea is to present a CTA less intrusively so prospects don’t feel as inclined to click “x”.
• Welcome gates – Not many people want to see a huge CTA asking for their information as soon as they navigate to a web page. The copy for welcome gates needs to be worded very carefully so prospects don’t feel annoyed and leave your website.
• Feature boxes – The great thing about using a feature box is that people don’t have to click to access a contact information submission page.

Where you place your CTA can make a significant difference in conversion rates. Test placements along with copy variations to determine the optimal variation that will resonate with leads online.

Ultimately a CTA should be enticing enough to convince prospects to submit their contact information in exchange for an offer they deem as valuable. The more relevant the CTA is to the offer and the audience, the better your chances will be of gaining leads online.