Copywriting 101: Crafting a Compelling Call to Action

Whether you’re trying to sell a product, gather leads or encourage readers to contact your office, simply getting your website visitors to take a defined action can be one of the most difficult parts of marketing online.  The key to getting the largest number of people possible to take your defined action lies in your call to action – the series of compelling factors that drive them to complete the set task.

You don’t need to be a copywriting genius to craft a compelling call to action – simply follow the steps below in order to boost your conversion rates and improve your business’ bottom line:

Step #1 – Define and Reinforce Your USP

But before you can even start thinking about how to build a good call to action, you’ll need to address a few things with your sales copy in order to get your visitors into a buying mood.  And that starts by defining and reinforcing your USP.

Your USP refers to your “unique selling point” or “unique selling proposition”.  In simple terms, your USP is what makes your business different and why visitors should buy from you versus every other site on the web.  It isn’t always easy to define what makes your company unique, but if you aren’t yet clear on this key concept, it’s a good idea to invest some time in thinking one up.

Unfortunately, you’re not done there.  It’s not enough to simply *have* a USP – you need to lay it out clearly for your buyers and then reinforce it in your call to action when you’re asking visitors to complete a given task.  Inject this message throughout your sales copy in order to plant the idea firmly in your readers’ minds.

Step #2 – Identify Your Product’s Benefits

Next up, one of the most important rules in selling is to recognize that people buy benefits, not features.  What’s the difference?  Well, say you’re selling an all-natural diet supplement.  The fact that the pill is “all-natural” is a feature – a specific characteristic of the product.  The benefit of an all-natural pill is that the people taking the pill don’t need to worry about ingesting foreign chemicals or other harmful substances.

Similarly, the claim that the pill will help people lose weight is a feature, in that it identifies a single purpose or function of the product.  The benefit, on the other hand, is that users will feel better in their clothes, be more comfortable in a bathing suit and appear more attractive to the opposite sex.  It’s pretty obvious which of these is more persuasive from a buyer’s standpoint – emotional appeals to a user’s perceived flaws will always trump statements of fact about a product’s purpose.

As you go through your copy, take note of how you describe your product.  If you need to share a specific product feature, be sure to pair that with another sentence that describes what that feature means for the user in an emotional sense.  Then – later on – remember to reference the most powerful of these emotional appeals in your call to action.

Step #3 – Offer a Guarantee

Another key element to your sales copy is to close out your discussion of features and benefits with a guarantee – typically a 30-day, 60-day or unlimited money-back return policy.  Essentially, your guarantee eliminates the risk that comes along with purchasing your product.  If someone is on the fence about buying, a good guarantee could help him or her take the final step towards purchasing by knowing that the purchase is entirely refundable.

Generally, the details of your guarantee are shared immediately after your pricing information, but before your final action.  However, it’s still a good idea to reference your guarantee in your closing call to action, just to reinforce that there’s no risk associated with buying your product.

For example, consider the closing call to action for the popular “Site Build It” software program:

“Take advantage of our Money-Back Satisfaction & Success Guarantee.  Use it to convert your purchase into a “no risk take-it-home-for-a-test-drive” trial. In other words… Purchase and then decide.”

If you weren’t sure whether or not the product would meet your needs, wouldn’t you feel better about buying after hearing that call to action?

Step #4 – Connect the Dots for Your Visitors

So far in the sales process, you’ve explained what makes your product or service different from the others on the market, appealed to your prospect’s hidden hot button issues and even guaranteed your reader’s satisfaction.  Surely all of that will be enough to close the deal, right?!

In some cases, yes.  Some people will be so excited about your product by this point that they’ll click the “Buy Now” button as soon as it appears on your sales page.  But this isn’t always the case – in fact, most of the visitors who come to your site need you to tell them exactly what to do in order to close the deal.

In the traditional sales world, this is called “asking for the sale,” and it refers to the idea that, even if you’ve laid all your cards on the table, some people still need you to tell them directly to “buy now” before they’re able to take the next step.  As an example, consider the call to action from Russell Brunson’s “Dot Com Secrets” course, which ranks near the top of the Google SERP for the competitive keyword “make money online”:

“If you’re ready to jump in head first, and want to get access to the best that DotComSecrets has to offer now, then I recommend joining the “DotComSecrets Illuminati” now.  This is our private membership site AND monthly print journal (and the ONLY place where you get LIVE training each month from Russell and the WHOLE DotComSecrets team).  Get more information about DotComSecrets Illuminati now!”

As you can see, Russell doesn’t hope that his visitors will figure out what he wants them to do based on all the other information he’s given them throughout the site.  Instead, he tells them exactly what to do in order to reap the benefits of the product he’s selling.

Often times, this final call to action is done through text on the button that will take visitors to the next stage in the buying process – whether that’s the checkout or a one-time offer displayed in the sales funnel at this point.  Keep in mind that it’s a good idea to split test different the text of call to action buttons and statements, as minor changes here can have a major impact on your conversion rates.

Although copywriting – and writing calls to action in particular – may seem like part-art, part-rocket science, it’s actually possible for anyone to improve their skills in this area with a little bit of practice.  So if your sales page isn’t converting on the level you’d like it to, make sure all of the above elements are present in your sales copy.  Putting some serious thought into the best call to action for your products and audience will pay off big down the road.

Image: J. Paxon Reyes