Your promotions need to be both informative and persuasive. They need to show how you can help them solve a problem or satisfy a want. They also need to call them to act in a way that is in their best interest.
The most effective calls to action are tied to helping people buy the things they need, not the things you want them to buy. Selling people things that won’t benefit them is not a good long-term business.
Overview
The odds are too low to calculate that on any given day, there will be a high number of people motivated that day to buy from you. This reality makes attracting new customers to any business a significant business obstacle that most small business owners never overcome.
Those that do enjoy a healthy stream of new customers are highly effective at three things:
- They know how to communicate with their target customer. I.e., they know how to reach them and what is the best way to get their attention.
- They know what will capture their attention. I.e., they know how to break through the noise, so their message gets considered.
- They have a strong call to action that leads their target customer to take the desired action. I.e., they use their promotion to lead the target customer to initiate through their action their sales process.
Unless you are a large corporation, who has money to burn on brand building, it is always a promotion failure when part of your message doesn’t include telling your target customer what to do. In marketing, it’s the part of the advertisement designed to turn observers into leads that sales can convert into customers.
A compelling call to action is a signpost that lets the user know what to do next. Failing to provide a call to action makes the target customer have to figure out what the next steps to take to purchase a product or sign up for your service. Only the highly motivated buyer will go to this trouble; most will stop considering your message and move on to the next thing. When this happens, you just wasted whatever promotional investment you made to capture their attention.