Copywriting: Call to Action (CTA)

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What Is a Call to Action?

A call to action (CTA) is a phrase that encourages readers to take a specific action after reading a marketing text.

It can take many forms, but the most common include an invitation to purchase a product (such as the CTAs found on e-commerce websites) or a request to get a quote or contact a company, while newsletter subscriptions are particularly suitable for blog articles.

In general, a CTA tells readers exactly what they need to do next and shows them how to get what they're looking for.

A Marketing Text Without a CTA Isn't Marketing

Writing a marketing text without including a call to action is a huge mistake because it leaves readers without any direction at the very moment they might be ready to take action, which naturally means losing someone who could have been genuinely interested in what you offer.

You must never assume that readers already know how to contact you or that they'll be willing to search for the right button themselves.

Many people (if not everyone) read a piece of content and then leave the page simply because they can't find a clear next step (source: "The 'UX Factor' for Increasing Sales and Profits: Optimise Your Site for Growth," Google).

However, as I mentioned earlier, not every marketing text needs to sell something.

If you've written an informational article, you can encourage readers to explore another article on a related topic, while a service page might invite them to request more information or subscribe to your company's newsletter.

What matters is that every marketing text has a specific goal and a clearly defined CTA that helps readers take the intended action.

How to Write an Effective CTA

An effective CTA must be extremely specific and concise because readers need to understand immediately what will happen when they follow your invitation (source: "How to Write Successful Online Text Ads," Google).

This means generic phrases like "Click here" or "Learn more" explain absolutely nothing and force readers to guess what they'll find after clicking, which is something nobody wants to do, so they'll simply leave and look for content that gives them clearer directions.

If you want someone to download a free guide, you must write "Download the free guide" instead of "Click here"... I know it sounds obvious, but plenty of people still make this mistake.

The more specific your CTA is, the easier it becomes for readers to understand whether the proposed action is useful to them.

Where to Place Your CTA

A CTA must always appear at the end of a marketing text.

Can you include it elsewhere?

That depends on the length of the content.

If the text is short, a single CTA at the end may be enough, while longer content can benefit from additional placements throughout the page.

In that case, you must choose points where readers have already received enough information to become interested in the action you're proposing.

For example, after explaining how a service works, you can invite readers to request a quote without forcing them to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page.

However, you must avoid repeating the same CTA after every paragraph because it makes the content annoying to read and gives people the impression that all you care about is selling something.

There's also one extremely important rule: Only one type of CTA per marketing text.

"Download the free guide," not "Download the guide and request a quote."

If you ask readers to do multiple things at once, you'll only confuse them and make the next step unclear.