how to create effective calls to action

How to Create Effective Calls to Action

Denise Wakeman & Dr. Rachna Jain http://www.fromplatformtoprofit.com


2 © Copyright Denise Wakeman and Dr. Rachna Jain. All Rights Reserved.

About Your Presenters

Denise Wakeman

• Marketing on the Web since 1996 • Blogging since 2004 • Built 3 successful 6-figure businesses • Author of blogging & online marketing programs • Co-author – Success Secrets of Social Media

Superstars • Mentor/Speaker/Trainer • http://www.Twitter.com/denisewakeman

Dr. Rachna Jain

• Psychologist-Coach, Author, Speaker • Contributing Editor, Hearst Publications • Blogging since 2003 • Marketing online since 1998 • Really Good at Making Complex Ideas Easy to

Understand • http://www.Twitter.com/rachnajain



How to Create Effective Calls From Platform to Profit

With Denise Wakeman and Dr. Rachna Jain

“Action is the foundational key to all success.” ~Pablo Picasso. Denise Wakeman: How do you get people to do what you want them to do? How do you get them to take action? Like subscribe to your email list, visit your blog or buy your product. It really all comes down to your call to action as to whether or not your visitor/reader/buyer will take action. Today, Rachna and I are going to talk to you about how to create effective calls to action on your content so you can get more of what you want, which may be traffic, leads, and clients. The bottom line is that when you have effective calls to action, you’ll make more money. Just a quick note, we will also be telling you about how you can continue your mastery of content repurposing and syndication near the end of the call if you’d like to take your learning further. Let’s get going. Today’s program is How to Create Effective Calls to Action for your content platform. Rachna? Rachna Jain: Let’s talk first about what you’re going to learn. We’re going to start by talking about what is a call to action. We’re going to talk about why to use calls to action. We’re going to talk about what are some effective calls to action, what makes them effective. We’re going to talk about testing. We’re going to talk about metrics. Then, we’re going to wrap up with Q&A. Before we do that, let us tell you a little bit about ourselves. Denise, did you want me to introduce myself first? Denise: Yes, go ahead. Rachna: Okay. I wanted to say hello. I’m Dr. Rachna Jain. I’m a psychologist, I’m a coach, I’m an author and I’m a speaker. I’m contributing editor to Hearst Publishing which publishes magazines like Seventeen, Redbook, and some of the other big magazines you see on the shelf. I am really good at making complex ideas easy to understand. I’ve been working online since 1998 and blogging since 2003. We definitely



have a lot of good experience here between Denise and me to help you gain visibility and credibility on the web. Denise: For those of you we haven’t had a chance to connect with yet, some people are alumni who are participating and some are new students. I’m Denise Wakeman. You probably know me as the founder of The Blog Squad. I’m also an online visibility expert. I’ve been marketing on the web since 1996-the early days. I’ve been blogging since 2004. In that time I have built three successful 6 figure businesses. I know a little bit about using the web to build a business. I am also the author of quite a few blogging programs and also online marketing programs. I’m a co-author of “Success Secrets of Social Media Superstars” and the recent book that was just published “Trust Your Heart: How to Transform Your Ideas into Income.” That was a bestseller within 5 hours of its launch on Amazon. That was very exciting. I’m also a mentor, a speaker and a trainer. We could both talk on and on about our accomplishments because we’ve both been working for a long time on the web. That would get pretty boring. I do want to really be clear that we started at zero. We started not knowing anything. If you’re feeling a little bit like, “Oh, there’s so much information. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to start.” Trust the fact that you just take it one step at a time. That’s what we did. That’s how we built our businesses. We’re here to help you take those steps so that you can be as efficient and as successful as possible. We realized that you can repurpose and syndicate as much as you want and get your stuff all over the place, but if nothing is happening in your business then there’s a big disconnect. That disconnect often comes down to the call to action that you are calling out to people to take some action. We realized that most people are not using calls to action or if they are, they’re not very good. People are complaining a lot about social media and how they’re not seeing any results, they’re not making money. There’s a link between these two experiences, as I’ve alluded to. You can be all over Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn but if nobody is hiring you or buying your products and services, there is a gap. That’s what



we wanted to address. Really take a look at that and see how we can help you be more effective in that way.

Rachna: I’m a psychologist by training-here’s what I know: if you want people to act, you need to tell them what to do. I’d like you to just take a moment and I’d like you to consider how many times you might have fallen into the trap of saying, “I don’t want to be pushy. I don’t want to tell them what they need to do. If people really like my stuff or like my content, they’ll know automatically how to find me. I’ve put my url on everything. I’ve put my blog link everywhere. They’ll know automatically what I want them to do- it’s self evident. If I’ve given them good content, they’ll click back and find me or follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook.” The reality is if you want people to act, you need to tell them what to do. So one of the things that Denise and I have seen is that people leave a lot to chance when they are marketing online. They put out excellent content. They learn all of our strategies. They repurpose it. They syndicate it. But, they never tell the reader, the listener or the viewer what they want them to do next. There are a couple problems with that. We’re going to talk about some of those at length. The first problem with that is people will then read your content or listen to your content and then they’ll click away. They might come back or they might not. You totally left it up to them. The second problem with that is you have no way of knowing if your message is being heard because you’re not getting any response. The thing about working in social media is that you put a lot of stuff out there and you don’t know-I could put something out (this has happened to me) I can put an article out 5 years ago and I don’t get any response from it but then people all of a sudden email me and say, “I read your article on this one site.” I completely forget I’ve got that



article out there. Then they get in touch with me. That’s because I had a call to action. I said, “If you have a question, contact me. If you want my newsletter, join here.” The reality is, is that the only way you can test your conversions (to know if people are responding to your message) is if you have calls to action and if you monitor and measure what people are doing with your calls to action. We’re going to talk more about that as we go on. The thing that you must realize is that until you tell people what you want them to do next, you don’t have any kind of metrics or measurement that you need to run your business more successfully. Denise, did you want to add anything to that? Denise: No. I think that is it-you covered that one. Rachna: Okay. So then do you want to talk on what is a call to action?

Denise: Yes. Absolutely. What is the call to action? Commonly, we refer to them as a CTA. A call to action is a specific instruction. It’s like a sign that says, “Stop! Stop what you’re doing right now and do this.” It’s a suggested activity that guides people towards your desired outcome. Essentially, a call to action, a CTA, needs to be simple. It needs to be easy. It needs to be clear. Often I see people making the mistake of trying to include too many calls to action in their content. Ideally, there needs to be just one action per content item. You’ll see me sometimes not following this either, but when possible just one call to action per content item.



Rachna: We’re going to talk about why dowe need them. So I alluded to this a little bit already but most people never bother to take action on something that they want or like, especially if they have to do the work to figure out the next step. Let’s just have you think about this in your own business for a minute. How many times have you wanted to accomplish something but you didn’t exactly know how. Maybe you did a little bit of effort to make it happen, to try to figure it out. Then, when you couldn’t do that easily you just stopped doing anything. Procrastination is a huge problem that many people suffer from. It comes directly from that. It comes from this idea that they don’t know how to do the next step so they don’t do anything. You, as a marketer, as a business owner, you need to make it effortless. You need to make it so easy, so dead simple to get your visitors, readers, audience to take action. You need to make sure that every piece of content you have has a call to action embedded in it. That can be in the middle, it can be at the beginning, it can be at the end. You have to tell them what they should do next. Think about this: you can have 500 amazing articles all over the internet. If you only have your name on it and you forget to put your blog url or you don’t actually specifically say, “Come see me on my blog,” you’re basically throwing away opportunity. All the things that you’re learning, all the effort you’re putting in to get your message out into the world, you basically are not using that opportunity as fully as you can.



Remember that all the good content in the world will not help you build your business unless you tell people what you want them to do next. This is why we have decided to do this training. This is why we’re really harping on what seems to be a simple point. I want you to start looking around as you travel about the internet. I want you to see who is actually using calls to action and who is not. You’ll probably find, as we have, that they aren’t being used as much as they should be. So Denise, do you want to talk about what makes a call to action effective?

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how to create effective calls to action

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