Call to action = Sales!
In a recent
Sitepronews.com , newsletter titled "
Your Website Doesn't Need A Traditional Call To Action ", Jerry Bader offers terrible advice for your website. Without a single offer of legitimate proof of his expertise in the field of marketing, Mr. Bader basically tells you that all the marketing experts are wrong, then proceeds to give "advice" that is almost guaranteed to send your sales plummeting.
As an example of why you should not include a call to action, our "marketing expert", Bader offers this - "act now and we'll send you two pieces of junk you don't need, but wait there's more, call in the next ten minutes and we'll add a third useless item.", followed by - Does any intelligent person really respond to this kind of pitch, and what self-respecting business would actually behave in this manner?
Well, "Mr. Marketing Expert", yes people do respond to those pitches, that is why you see them done all the time and you see the same commercials having long runs. They do it because it is profitable and it is profitable because it works. As for "what self-respecting business would actually behave in this manner?", it is those self-respecting businesses that are profitable and that send fat quarterly checks to their stockholders, that's who.
Bader overlooks the obvious question of whether the tactics that work on a "gee-whiz" kitchen knife are the same that should be used for say, a personal services business - an oversight that calls Bader's common sense into question as well as his marketing expertise.
Bader goes on to say, "Marketing Is More Art Than Science". Rather than argue the semantics of that line, let's just look at how he uses it. Bader seems to imply with this, that art is not something that can be studied and learned. Tell that to the hundreds of art and music schools that abound!
Marketing, whether you call it science, art or both, is absolutely something that can be learned and had better not be ignored in our free-enterprise society.
But down to the bottom line - should your website include a call to action? You've attracted your prospect to your web page. If done right, this page has perked up his interest, then given him interesting, useful information, illustrating a problem to be solved and offering a solution to that problem.
Do we stop here? You have a qualified prospect on your web page and he's been intrigued enough to read down two-thirds of the page. Do we end it here or do we motivate and include a "call to action"?
I have been in sales. I have been #1 salesman in the Los Angeles area for a major insurance company. I've been top salesman for a new car dealership in a smaller town. I've run successful companies competing against larger ones, for decades. I have been through at least a dozen sales training programs, wrote a few, and read probably a hundred or more sales and marketing books. From all this, I can tell you that the most important thing is to "ask for the sale".
When I sold insurance, more sales were made after the third "no" than any other time. You can't get past the third "no" if you don't ask for the sale four times. You certainly won't make any sales if you never ask for the sale even one time!
Your web page should definitely include a
call to action and it should take the tone of expecting that the customer will want to buy now (the "assumed close"). It should make it very easy for the customer to take this action and provide whatever assurances and / or incentives that may be appropriate to your product or service. (
Note: these may be quite different from what is appropriate for a kitchen device).
For wedding videographers, your call to action might be something like this -
Our calendar fills up rapidly this time of year. Please check to ensure that your date is still available and if you've viewed our sample wedding video, we would encourage you to reserve your date now by clicking this button [Button] to ensure that our services will be available on your date. If you have not yet seen our sample video, why not order your free copy today? [Order DVD]As a brand new insurance salesman, back in the late sixties, I gave many presentations that were probably pretty good, then left without ever asking for the sale. (i.e.: no "call to action") Do you know how many insurance policies I sold my first two months? One - to my brother-in-law!
Although I started in January and had only one sale going into March, I ended the year as top life insurance salesman in all of Los Angeles, and let me tell you this - it was all due to the "call to action".
Today in our web development business and corporate videography business, we urge clients to always include calls to action and we tend to keep clients because they love the fact that we help them boost their sales with marketing advice.
