What should you do when your publicity campaign is yielding zero results? Before you pivot completely, this is an important moment to evaluate your call to action to ensure it's clear, concise and urgent. This ensures that readers/viewers are able to quickly and easily execute it so you see real results from your press strategy.
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Make sure your CTA works
How to transform your CTA into a more attractive pitch to reporters
Mentioning the CTA authentically in interviews
You were featured in the news, but you didn't get any new clients or sales as a result. This is incredibly frustrating and often amounts to a significant waste of your resources– time, money and staff.
Most media departments and publicists know that news placements aren't guaranteed and so it's difficult to promise a high return on news placements. However, you can reduce this grey area significantly by understanding human behavior and general marketing trends to transform your press strategy and see a better ROI.
What is a call to action?
A CTA is any language, image or design that prompts an immediate response- or 'action'. The point is to drive human behavior around your brand's goals and priorities.
As a result, your interview is not the time to ramble about how the organization was founded. Instead, it's the time to build the story around your CTA. While more followers, clicks and views should be a goal, it's not your main goal. It's simply the result of a great press campaign. So dig deeper to find your actual goal surrounding revenue, clients or contracts and then ask: When this interview ends, what do I want people to do?
That is your call to action.
When you don't have a clear CTA with great follow-up methods already in place to structure the press strategy around, the result is that even when readers are interested in the story, you can't capitalize on this interest and convert them into new clients or sales.
Free examples of calls to action. You can use the below to shape your press strategy:
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Now that you know what it is and why a CTA matters for your press campaign, let's go over the aspects of a great one so you can re-evaluate and refine yours:
Clear: A reader or viewer should be able to know exactly what you want them to do. Bonus points if your CTA is so clear, they can repeat it to others and organically spread your message. Remember to focus on your bigger revenue goals and shape the CTA around this so you see results that align with your overall plans.
Urgent: If someone can do something tomorrow, chances are they will. Add that we're in the middle of a pandemic and people are exhausted and the result is that very few people take action immediately– unless prompted to. Make it clear you need their help now. Emotion is an easy way to do this and by using certain sounds, music or visuals you can provoke people into action. Also try a timed discount, a freebie, or other giveaway.
Easy to do: Most people will only take 1-2 steps. Keep this in mind when asking people to do something. Most will not remember a URL with more information past .com or, if they do, type it all in. In fact, most Internet users won't even wait too long for a webpage to load. You need to ensure your website is easy-to-use and functional. We highly recommend actually trying your funnel. Pretend you're a stranger and look at the copy, the process, and the overall difficulty. Make changes from there to improve functionality and appeal.
Once you have your CTA, it should be just a few words to maybe 1-2 sentences at most. Now you have the core of your press campaign as well.
Tweak as necessary and get ready for our next post, which will explore using your CTA in your press strategy and avoiding the common fear many business owners face: being too "promotional."
Need help with your call to action and press strategy? Let's set up a call: