You don’t understand CTA’s
I think it's weird that we say "Calls-To-Action," but abbreviate them as CTAs. That would be Call-To-Actions.
Cambridge dictionary defines "Call-To-Action" as: something such as a speech, piece of writing, or act that asks or encourages people to take action about a problem. I dropped in the dictionary definition because, when it comes to CTAs, everyone has a different idea of what they are. That's not a bad thing; CTAs take a different form in every industry/situation. What is a bad thing is the disagreement on how and how much they should be used.
So today, in this very blog, I'm going to teach you EXACTLY how and how much to use CTAs. This is empirically and unequivocally true. Anyone who says otherwise is entitled to their opinion, but their opinion is wrong.
Have you ever had a rock in your shoe?
It's terrible. Having a rock in your shoe is objectively uncomfortable and annoying. And heaven forbid you're not in the situation to get the rock out of your shoe! You're going to hyper-focus on that rock until the very second you can rid yourself of it. You'll try to shake your foot around to move the rock. You'll try to work it off to the side or between your toes. You'll do that weird arch thing where you press with your toes to lift up the middle of your foot. You'll adjust your whole posture and gait just because of this one stupid rock. But you're late for work, and you have an important meeting starting soon, so you ignore the rock as best you can.
Now it's 4:58 pm and you're listening to the last voicemail of the day and you just want to go home. You've been at your desk since your meeting started and you desperately need to use the bathroom. You shut off your computer, grab your bag, stand up and suddenly remember that motherfucking rock in your shoe. You rush to the bathroom and, at this point, you just want the leftovers in your fridge. You go straight to your car, drive home, kick off your shoes and collapse on the couch.
The next morning, you get ready to go and put on your shoes. The moment you stand up, you feel the rock. You remember the experience you had yesterday, and quickly take a moment to remove the rock.
Have you ever had a pair of uncomfortable shoes?
I am a long-term shoe-wearer. Because I may be the first person to ever put those words in that order, I'll explain what I mean. I hate buying new shoes. Once I find a comfortable pair that serves the purpose, I will wear that pair of shoes until they fall apart. In high school, I had a pair of flip-flops that I taped cardboard to the sole of TWICE because I liked the way they fit.
There always comes a point where a pair of shoes is too far gone to wear, but before that point is a swath of discomfort that I (and I think most people) deem tolerable. Whether it's the pair of heels that are cute but too tight on your toes, or the sneakers with a bare-wire rough patch in the heel, we all have the pair. Maybe they're your best running shoes and you've already got a callous so thick on your heel that you barely notice the rough patch. Or maybe they're your only pair of navy, business casual flats and they haven't made shoes wide enough for you since you were a child, so you can't even feel the squeeze of your pinkie toe.
No matter what your threshold for "too far gone" is, we have all worn a pair of shoes far past the point that they should be worn. We have all sat down, put on a pair of shoes and thought, "these are bad, but not bad enough!" and gone on with our day.
Why are we talking about shoes so much?
Call-To-Actions are your chance to put a rock in someone's shoe. That person taking the rock out of their shoe is the action that you called for. Removing the rock, or buying a new pair of shoes, is a conversion on your CTA.
Sometimes a person needs that rock to be there for a while before they do anything about it. Sometimes a person is wearing sandals and they can easily shake out the rock. Sometimes a person will catch you in the act and say, "Hey asshole, why are you putting rocks in my shoes?" Adding a CTA to a post or piece of marketing is like putting a rock in someone's shoe, it's not an exact science and you have to wait for the right moment.
What you don't want to do is slip into someone's area of discomfort. If you leave the same rock in your shoe forever, eventually it will just become part of the shoe. If you hammer away on the same CTA at every opportunity, your audience will become blind to it. And it's a lot easier to get someone to take a rock out of their shoe than to buy a whole new pair.
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