You can have beautifully-written gated content with stellar landing pages, but the only way potential leads will find their way there is with a well-crafted call to action (CTA). Obsessing over your site traffic is only half the battle. It’s sort of like online dating. If people are clicking on your profile, that’s great, but it doesn’t mean anything unless they’re messaging you for a date.

Similarly, you need website visitors to navigate to your landing pages and provide you with that critical contact information. The only thing standing between you and your potential lead is the CTA. If you’re struggling to get leads, you may be making one (or more) of these common CTA faux pas.

1. Missing CTA

Whoops. You’ve created some stellar content, promoted the heck out of it on social media, but forgot to include a call to action. Don’t waste all your efforts by neglecting to capture leads. If you’re not sure how to begin writing CTAs, check out our post “How to Create CTAs: A Step-By-Step Guide To Make Them Great.”

2. Overselling and Under-Delivering

There’s a fine line with CTAs. You want to be enticing enough to get users to click on it, but you also don’t want to make any promises that you can’t keep. Don’t bog down your CTA with a bunch of self-proclaimed hype. Users can smell the sales pitch from miles away. Instead, include what your post, eBook, or newsletter actually contains. If it really is as awesome as you think, it’ll speak for itself.

3. Being Difficult to Find

Having a CTA that’s impossible to find is just as bad as not having a CTA. Great designers can make your call to action blend right in with the design of your site, but that can also unintentionally make it difficult to find it. Users can easily glance over it. Instead, make the colors and design in your CTA pop against the rest of your site. Don’t be afraid to make it big enough that it won’t go unnoticed either.

4. Not Being Authoritative or Specific

You want your CTAs to be actionable. Tell visitors exactly what to do. Passive language doesn’t encourage people to do anything. Try using verbiage like “learn,” “view,” or “discover.” Compare the two: “Content Marketing eBook,” or “Learn How to Drive Traffic to Your Website.” What’s more convincing? My vote is for the latter.

5. Providing the Wrong Offer

This mistake can be difficult to spot, but it’s critically important. You have to understand your company’s specific sales funnel. A blog post isn’t likely a good place to include a CTA for expensive consulting services. Instead, choose an offer that fits with where the user is in the sales process. A blog reader would be more likely to sign up for a free report or an eBook.

Every time a reader visits your site and leaves without subscribing, you’ve lost a sales lead. Your CTA is the friendly gate-keeper to your lead generation strategy. A killer call to action is going to make your content more valuable in a sales perspective, and help your readers get the information they need to make a buying decision.

If you need assistance creating powerful calls to action for you company, SkyRocket Group can help! Call us at (814) 833-5026 or e-mail us at info@skyrocketgroup.com to speak to one of our content creation experts today.