Creating Effective Calls to Action (CTA’s) with Video Content

Marketing is all about getting people to do something. That could be joining a mailing list, following a brand on social media, downloading educational information, or making a purchase. Marketing is also a call to action. Whether content is focused on brand growth or getting new clients, calls to action are important.

There are different types of calls to action that can be used for different purposes. For example, if a company wants to increase brand awareness, they might create a CTA that drives potential customers to a page where they can learn more about the company and sign up for a mailing list. If the company wants to drive sales during a particular time frame, they might create a CTA that takes potential customers directly to the purchase page online or on mobile.

Brands can increase the effectiveness of their CTA's (calls to action) and their effect on potential consumers' propensity to search online for information about the company directly after viewing the CTA. Their CTA's (calls to action) delivered via end tags vary in length from three to ten seconds. What's really interesting is that if the end tag is delivered in a clever manner, users are more likely to search about the product than if they just listed a url address. 

Here's what we've learned:

KEY POINT #1

Make sure to end your webpages with search prompts that capitalize on your consumers' propensity to search. This will help increase the chances that they will find your site.

Google did a study of 98 TV campaigns and found that all of them saw an increase in product discovery in the first 15 minutes the ad aired. To learn more, they teamed up with Dyson and JBL to see what would happen when viewers were prompted to search for a specific item. In the case of Dyson, 24% of all queries that occurred in the five minutes following the spots were from people who saw the custom "Search Dyson V6 on Google" messaging. This suggests that a search prompt end tag would perform better than a URL.

JBL did a study to see which copy variant worked best. They found that the straightforward "Search Google for JBL Extreme" did the best.

You can read more about the study here.

It's interesting that the search prompt focused simply on what the consumer is being asked to do, and the consumer insight that people typically do pick up their device after viewing something they are interested in.

KEY POINT #2

You need to test the effectiveness of the placement of calls to action. It is a good idea to test where to put your call-to-action (CTA) button. You can use A/B tests to see which placement gets the most responses. However, the best practice is to use an end tag so the brand can create engagement before asking for any action. Sometimes, running banners throughout a website with a phone number or URL can be a good tactic for time-sensitive sales offers.

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