Calling Action

The 2 Main Types of Call to Action Every Marketer Should Know

By: Kimberly Grant

Every good marketing communication has a call to action or CTA.  A CTA is the thing that you want your target audience to do to make your marketing communication successful.  Call to actions can be anything from making a purchase to signing up to receive a newsletter.

Taking Action

In order for the target audience to take that action, it is important for them to be challenged to take that action.  I know that sounds like fighting words, but it’s quite true in marketing.  Challenging your audience to act is not like a duel at dawn.  It’s more like guiding your audience to where they need or want to be.  One way of guiding your target audience to take action is to use an outside source or higher purpose that generates a strong reaction in your audience.

As the last step in the AIDA (awareness, interest, desire, action) model, a good call to action will clearly communicate the steps your audience will need to take to have a peaceful existence or gain that thing that they need or want.

There are two types of CTAs:

1. Direct
2. Transitional

Directing the Call

Direct CTAs are pretty easy to spot.  With this type of CTA, a marketer is asking the consumer to do something like make a purchase or schedule an appointment.  In a real-world scenario, a self-published author like myself would use the words “buy novels”.  The “buy novels” button on a website would be used to generate books sales of her awesome fantasy series.  If you’re wondering where my call to action button is, you can scroll to the top of this page.

Did you see what I did there?

Transitioning the Call

This leads me to the second type of call to action: transitional.  Transitional CTAs aren’t as easy to spot.  These CTAs serve to further the relationship a brand has with their existing customer or help an in-market target audience member to transition from the desire to action in the AIDA model.

These transitional calls also serve to help the brand solidify its place in the market and helps with guiding their customers to continue doing business with them.  A real-world example of a transitional call to action would be when this writer engages in promotional activities for her latest novel, The Servant.  Any time I conduct an Amazon free book promotion or price countdown, I’m allowing my current readers to get their hands on my next novel at a discount.  You can even take a look at my Amazon page to see if I’m running one of those Amazon promotions now.

Action Calling

Calls to Action are a small, but fierce way to get a consumer to get to the end of the AIDA model.  Taking that action should be a mutually beneficial transaction between the consumer and the business.  This transaction will also solidify your brand’s relationship with their target audience.  At that time, target audience members become customers.

Wanting more action?  You can see my last post here.