No dead ends: How to use calls-to-action to convert leads
Every content journey leads to a call-to-action; the point where prospects decide whether to take the next step with you towards purchase. If you’ve provided them with the right content experience leading up to that pivotal moment, your prospects should be engaged–nay, excited–to take that next step with you. This pivotal moment–where your buyer stays with you, or bounces–is the moment your call-to-action shines…and demand generation marketing managers, you’d better nail it.
Table of Contents:
- What is a call-to-action?
- Unlock the buying team with a gated sales stream
- Turn your best content into demand generation tools
- Use form CTAs to generate subscribers–but not the way you think
- Content relevance is king
What are calls-to-action?
A call-to-action (CTA) is the pièce de resistance for all of your marketing materials. The CTA is the behavior that you’re driving your audience towards on their content journey. It can either direct traffic further down the funnel, or it’s the final conversion point for your campaign. At Uberflip, we think of CTAs in two basic functions: as link drivers, and as lead drivers. Within the Uberflip platform, there are two types of CTAs:
- Link CTAs: these clickable links are used to drive buyers to a specific piece of content
- Form CTAs: these prompt prospects to complete a form and are used to gate high-value content to generate leads.
Whichever path you choose should be directed by your overall campaign objective. Do you wish to drive traffic to a particular asset? If so, you’ll likely use a link CTA indicating they can access the in depth. Typically, it reads something along the lines of, Read the full report here. When they click the CTA, they’ll be taken to your high-value content to continue self-nurturing.
If you’re nurturing prospects toward conversion as a part of your demand generation marketing campaigns, a form CTA is one of the arrows in your quiver that you’ll use to generate leads. Let’s say you’re driving event registrations for an event. You’ll likely provide your audience with a form CTA that reads something like, Register now. when they click the CTA, they’ll be able to enter their contact information and register for your event without having to travel anywhere.
Let’s take a look at three of our favorite, high-performing form CTA placements for powering your demand generation strategy!
Unlock the buying team with a gated sales stream
When your sales team is working with a key account, there are more members behind the curtain that will influence the purchase decision. On average, it takes six to ten members to make a B2B buying decision. While intent data provides context clues, the form CTA confirms who you are working with. This moves your content curation from an educated guess to spot-on.
Form CTAs can be used at this critical stage of the customer journey to unlock the buying group that your sales team may not have access to on their sales call. With this strategy, your sales team can use form CTAs to get to know the other key members of the buying team, outside of the mobilizer who they are already in touch with.
After your sales call, send through a custom content destination and place a form CTA over the content that asks for an email to “log in.” When the buyer shares the content stream with the rest of the buying team, the sales team can see which other team members are viewing the stream.
Your sales team can then use this information to better understand who’s involved in the decision-making process and better tailor the content experience to the buying team. When we introduced this tactic in 2022, the sales stream placement yielded a 6% submission rate, two whole points higher than average performance!
Turn your best content into demand generation tools
We couldn’t let a blog post about form CTAs pass by without discussing gating premium assets as a demand generation strategy. B2B marketers have an insatiable appetite for gated content. We don’t blame you–email gated content (including ebooks and events) yields 4x greater conversion than average form CTA performance! If you’d like to instantly turn your top-performing content into a lead gen tool, gate the asset with a form CTA. Don’t worry, gated content isn’t as intrusive as it once was; if you integrate your marketing automation platform (MAP) with Uberflip, you can create a progressive CTA. Once a user fills out a form and becomes a known user, they won’t have to fill out forms on other gated assets!
Please gate responsibly: Did you know that in the not-so-distant past, over 80% of B2B content was gated? Yea, let’s not do that again. Here’s a guide to gating content to help you 7x your conversion rate.
Use form CTAs to generate leads–but not the way you think
If vanity metrics such as click-through rate have taught us anything, it’s that volume doesn’t always translate into quality. What if you could collect higher-quality leads without throwing up barriers in your prospects’ self-nurturing?
Try making your form CTA a part of the content experience and rather than gating your asset, place your CTA beside your content. A form CTA placed within the content experience gives visitors the chance to subscribe to learn more without blocking them from consuming your content. This low-friction placement generates leads from visitors who truly do want to hear more from your company rather than those who fill out the email form as a means to an end and then ignore your follow-up communications.
Content relevance is king
Just like curated content, CTAs are most effective when they are contextually relevant. As you guide your prospects through their content journey, keep their content experience in mind and choose choose your CTAs wisely!
Customers: Looking for help with your form CTAs? Form CTAs are part of Uberflip’s MailChimp, HubSpot, and Eloqua integrations. Here are some helpful links to get started!