Copy And

9. How to Write High-Converting CTAs That People Want to Click

• Sam Burmeister | Conversion Copywriter @ Nomad Copy • Episode 9

Share episode

How to Write Sales Pages Part 4

If your sales page visitors don’t know where to click (or don’t want to), they’re not buying. In this episode of Copy And, I’m breaking down why calls to action matter so much, where most service providers go wrong, and how to write CTAs that feel clear, compelling, and easy to say yes to.

Key Points Covered in This Episode:

  • What a call to action actually does on a sales page or website
  • Where to place CTAs for maximum visibility and conversions
  • How to use verbs and identity-driven language in your button copy
  • Simple CTA best practices that make it easier for buyers to take the next step

Resources Mentioned

Catch up on the whole series here:

Part 1 - Sales Page Best Practices
Part 2 - Headlines That Hook
Part 3 - Above the Fold Must-Haves
Part 4 - CTAs That Get Clicks

SPONSORED BY:

Find Donna and the CEO Sprint podcast at this link!

To find Danielle at DM Squared Media, go to dmsquaredmedia.com/nomad. 

Connect with me:

Nomad Copy Services → sales pages, emails, websites, and more.

Get on my calendar → if you’d like me to write your sales copy for you!

Free Opt-In Copy Bot → Write high-converting opt-in pages in minutes

Watch episodes with subtitles on my YouTube

Nomad Copy Agency writes copy that CONVERTS for service-based businesses. Inquire about done-for-you services here.

hey, before we jump in, today's episode is going to have copy. Ann's very first sponsors. I edit my own podcast. So if the insertion of these sponsors is a little clunky, trust me, I know I'm figuring it out. I edit my own podcast. Please do not pitch me your services and these sponsorships will improve over time. If you'd like to become a sponsor of Copy and you can reach out to me via email at samantha@nomadcopyagency.com, let's dive in. CTAs CTAs, guys, we are talking about calls to action today and they should be one of the most exciting things that you get to write. What is a CTA? How do you write one? That's exactly what we're gonna get into today. My name is Sam and you are listening to Copy, and this is a marketing podcast where you as an online service provider, get to learn how to write copy that sounds like you, but converts better and you get to learn that from me, a nomad and a copywriter, and also a sales psychology expert. I learned the right way to sell in my 10 plus year sales career and I've been writing copy for the last six T and teaching other people how to write great copy as well. So you are here, you are learning from the expert, and what is one of the best ways to sell is to make clickable a f. Buttons because if people aren't clicking your buttons, they're not buying, they're not opting in, they're not ending up in your world. So today in this episode, the final episode of Four Sales page specific episodes. So if you're wondering where this came from, go back and listen to the three episodes before this. We've got sales page best practices headings that absolutely hook your reader and the above the fold to make sure that the first portion of your sales page gets people to read the rest of the sales page. If you want that context, go back and listen to those three. And hey, before we jump in, today's episode is going to have copy Ian's first sponsors. I edit my own podcast, so if they're a little clunky, trust me, I already know. I edit my own podcast and please don't pitch me. So these. I edit my own podcast and please don't pitch me on your services. So I just wanna give you the disclaimer that these sponsorships will improve over time. Also, if you'd like to become a sponsor, please reach out to me at samantha@nomadcopyagency.com. Let's dive in. we're here to talk about how to get people to click on your buttons, and we're specifically talking about these in the case of sales pages. However, I wanna be very clear that you should have CTAs in every single email that you send, every single opt-in page that you write, and every single page on your website. These are all other examples of copy, and you may even have CTAs in your content as well. So we're gonna talk about what's working with calls to action, the psychology behind them, and also how to write a really good one. I have a swipe file for you as well, so I'm gonna make sure that that's in the show notes, but let's go ahead and dive in. You would be surprised at how often I review somebody's copy and there is no way to opt in. You may know that I run a really cool membership called Copy on Demand, where people submit their copy to me and I review it and tell them what to improve and why they should improve it, why those improvements are relevant, so that they create better habits in their business, better copywriting habits, and ultimately sell more. Uh, so I see a lot of copy. I review this copy every single week and every single week somebody submits something to me and it doesn't have a call to action. Most of the time my people know better. They're just sending it because it's a done is better than perfect. They want feedback. They send it over, and I say, babe, how are people gonna buy from you? Where's your call to action? The other thing that's really important here is a lot of people say, well, there's a call to action further down the page. It's by the investment section. If you're selling something that costs more than, like, your lunch typically costs, so something more than 50 to a hundred dollars, people are likely not going to buy the first time they end up on your page, which means that in your other content and your emails and other copy. You're asking for the sale. A lot people are ending up on this page more than once, and you're telling them what they need to know to be able to purchase or to keep reading above the fold. But if there's no call to action above the fold, then they're gonna waste time looking around for something. They're gonna get distracted, they're not gonna buy from you. So your calls to action need to be visible and super freaking clickable. So. Let's start with what is a call to action? Call to action is just a button that gets somebody to convert, whether that's convert by buying, opting into something, or taking another action that moves them through your world. Most of the time it's a button. Most of the time, if you are saying, well, I don't like buttons, they don't really flow in my text. Rethink that because buttons in emails get clicked three times as much, and on sales pages get clicked 10 times as much as just in text links. So a call to action is simply. Something that people can click on. Now, how do we make them super clickable? There's two things that go into this copy and design. And again, we're always using copy and that's why this podcast is called Copy. And because copy does not stand alone, it is just a core tenant of your marketing plan. It's how you do your messaging and your actual copy, and it goes on all of your visuals. Like copy is important. It is the core tenant here. But to make a button super clickable. Let's talk about the copy first. There is a book, and if you're watching this on YouTube, you see this book behind me. It's called Identity Marketing by Veronica Romney. And what she says in this book is that when we are getting people to do something, we do not say, buy this. We say be this. And that's the difference between a good. A call to action would be like, it has verbs, it exists, and a great call to action is that it is encouraging people to become something. They're becoming a better version of themselves by clicking on this, and why are they becoming a better version of themselves? We know that sales psychology tells us that people do not buy a thing they buy because of the feeling that it gives them. And they buy their potential. So when we're writing great copy examples that I've seen of like very Okay. Copy recently would be Download it here, grab it now. I saw one recently that I mentioned this in a past episode that said, yes, please. Yes, please has personality, the first two at least have verbs. They don't just want to buy something. Very rarely does somebody wake up in the morning and say, man, I hope that I can purchase a course today. I hope that I can download A PDF today. They wake up in the morning and say, gosh, I really need to get better at designing my own website. Oh my gosh. What I would love to do today would be to cultivate more community in my life. So it's not about A PDF or what they're downloading or what they're doing, although those verbs are good to have on a button. You need to take them on a journey of what they're going to become. So here are a few examples you could write. Click here to download the PDF or talk about what happens inside of that PDF. Are they gonna learn how to design really clickable buttons? Because it could go from click here to download the PDF to start downloading. Start designing super clickable buttons. You could go from download now to become a canvas superstar or become a whatever you do superstar. You could go from buy now to join the club. Again, you'll remember from past episodes that there's something called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and basically he is a long gone, as far as I know, so social psychologist, and he understands that once our basic needs are met, then we get to start moving into things that get us closer and closer to self-actualization. And that is a sense of belonging and a sense of standing out. And when we use our buttons. To push other people's buttons. That's where we win. That's where people want to click, is that they start to take an action that creates a transformation, or they become someone else. They receive community by joining the club. So again, those examples that you can use for yourself, were of good buttons. Were start designing super clickable buttons. How can you translate that into your industry? Become a canvas superstar. What are you offering people in your course that they could become a superstar at or join the club? Is your community worth joining? The next thing that we're looking at, so we looked at copy. Now let's talk about copy and design for calls to action. The big thing here is colors and place. It's not complicated. Don't hide your call to action, though I've seen it before where people will put all of their text on one side of the page and their imagery on the other side of the page. That imagery will eat up a call to action button if the call to action button is below it. A CTA is ultimately well-designed copy and it needs to go with the other copy on the page. Make sure that your placement of your button is with other copy. Also, make sure that your calls to action throughout your sales pages are next to the transformation that people receive and not next to their problems. Their problem section will rarely have a call to action in it. You almost always, when you're framing up the solution, want to have a call to action next to that information. We also definitely wanna be sure that there's CTAs next to the pricing and also to position your pricing near a call to action. So oftentimes we'll see at the top of a page that says something like Join the club, and then below it there will be a little italics that say something like only$497 a month. That's what we want. That is where we want pricing and action to be taken together so that we also have that layer of transparency. Another note on placement is that we wanna make sure that it's placed pretty centrally and certainly designed to a point that it is one very readable we want. Samsara fonts whenever possible. We want them to be relatively short because a really big call to action button just looks goofy. And we want them to be designed in high contrast with the background that they show up on. So if you have a black background, a lime green call to action button would be a great option. We want that button to stand out and be so clear that it's a button. A trend that I've seen in design recently that looks good but is not clickable is to have a button be the same color as the background, but only have a border. So let's say it was a black background, it would be a black button with a lime green border that runs the risk of just looking like plain text. And we don't wanna do that, especially if you're using the same font in your body text as you are on your button. It's just not good. Create a situation where people don't know that they should be clicking on it, and you're gonna get less clicks, which ultimately for you means less conversions. I'm here to help you make money. If you are listening to this, I want you to make massive dollars on the internet. So to recap here, where do your calls to action go? They go on every single above the fold, on every single page, on every single sales page, and every single opt-in page. We need them above the fold. We also need them to be visible throughout the rest of the page and always positioned and clearly designed near the solution that you are offering. I'm gonna give you a little bonus here, but first I'm gonna remind you that in the show notes you can grab the clickable AF CTAs document, the clickable AF CTAs resource that I created that has a training as well as a swipe file of a bunch of different calls to action that I've seen and that I know have worked. So I encourage you to grab that at the. Link in the show notes. Also if you're having issues with writing this and wanna get on my calendar, I will make sure that we have that conversation link in the show notes as well. So finally, here's your bonus on these calls to action as we wrap up our sales page series. You are having calls to action on all of your published pages, but they should also be in your emails. And here's what you need to know about emails. Two things. One, you need to have buttons in your emails, not just in text links. They need to be so clear to see. And when it comes to design, make sure that if people are viewing their phone in nighttime mode where their background becomes black or dark gray, you need to make sure that your button will stand out against that color as well. So we need to have them buttons and we need to have those buttons as high up in the email as possible. I love storytelling. I love a good, well-written long email, but if it's not clear what you want people to do from that email early on. They're not gonna click through even if it's a button. So the two things that I wanna tell you about CTAs in emails is that we need buttons, not links, and we need to make sure that that button is high up in the email, preferably in the first half. All right. Thank you for listening. After this, we are moving out of just talking about sales pages. I am actually going to take a step back and tell you a little bit about myself and how I got here, because I've told you many times that I have. Tons of sales experience, tons of copywriting experience. But I wanna tell you a little bit more personally how I got here. It includes stories like how I quit my job on a beach in Vietnam. It includes stories like how I made President Circle at my company and then left it. I've got some pretty wild stories, especially stories that come from having been on the road. For several years before kind of settling down here in the US and only spending three to four months a year on the road, which you may think is also a really long time, but for me it's just not. So be sure to stick around next week where we dive into a little bit about me and then we will continue talking about all things sales copy. If you have questions and you would like me to cover them here on the podcast, please feel free to reach out. You can find me online at Nomad Copy and on. LinkedIn at Samantha Burmeister. I can't wait to talk to you. Thanks for hanging out. Be sure to like and subscribe. I know everybody says that in their podcast, but it truly, truly just lands as like a little kiss on the forehead when I see those things come through. So thank you in advance. I'll see you next week.