What's the single most important metric for your content marketing program?
The Call To Action.
Let's imagine two potential customers visiting your website, Alice and Bob. Both Alice and Bob find one of your blog posts through a search engine: they've never heard of your company before.
Alice finishes the blog post, which simply ends with a concluding paragraph: it doesn't ask her to do anything. Like all of us, she hits the "back" button on her browser, and goes back to the search engine. You've lost her as a customer forever.
Bob finishes a blog post that ends with a Call To Action: "If you want to learn more about this topic, download our free ebook." Bob obviously wants to learn more -- that's why he came in the first place -- so he gives you his email address to download your ebook. Now he's in your database.
You'd be surprised how many companies resist including a Call To Action in their content. Marketing managers routinely tell us, "We don't want to be too salesy." Guess what? Driving sales is your job. If you want to do art, go to art school. If you want to do marketing, then do your job.
When we focus our efforts around tracking and measuring the Call To Action, everything changes. It makes us focus on getting the reader's attention, keeping the reader engaged, and offering something useful at the end.
The Call To Action is also as far as content marketing can take us. Once we deliver that customer "lead," it's up to your sales department to make the sale. Showing success with Calls To Action shows that you've done your job.
We recommend varying the Call To Action, so you don't have the same sentence at the bottom of every blog post. Try a combination of CTAs:
- Download our free ebook
- Sign up for a free trial
- Check out a demo
- Join our mailing list
- Sign up for our webinar
- Check out our related blog post on this topic
Remember: the easier your Call To Action, the higher your response rate. "Download our ebook" is low commitment, low hassle. You'll get more leads, but they won't be as qualified. "Request a sales call" is high commitment, high hassle. You'll get very few leads, but they'll be hot prospects.
Our best advice is to experiment with a number of Calls To Action, and track the response rates on each. It's the single most important metric you can measure.
For more information, download our free ebook (or read on).
Next: How often should I publish?