Tips for including a CTA (Call To Action) in videos
What Is a CTA and Why Use It?
A CTA (call to action) is a term used in marketing to denote the act of encouraging viewers to take a specific action. Some of the simplest examples of CTAs would be inviting readers to follow a link, subscribe to a newsletter, buy a product, fill a poll, etc.
It is surprising how many businesses don’t include a CTA in their videos! By doing so, they miss out on a lot of potential business. And let’s not even mention those that put their CTAs in the sidebar or annotations — so few people pay attention to those that they’re almost irrelevant. Research has shown that if you incorporate a CTA into your video, you will get 380% more clicks than putting it in the sidebar!
Where Should You Put Your CTA?
Where to put your CTAs depend on your business needs, goals, and the platforms where people will be viewing your video content. In many cases, your options will be limited to two popular options: pre-roll CTA and post-roll CTA.
Pre-Roll Pros
All viewers will see them
It will be more memorable as the users will be freshly focused
Pre-Roll Cons
Many users will just skip it
It can feel too assertive, which might discourage some users from ever watching your video in the first place
Post-Roll Pros
Only the most interested users will remain until the end
Most likely to result in conversions
Feels most natural
Post-Roll Cons
Many users will never get to the point of seeing this CTA as only a few reach the end of a video
Easily skippable
Depending on the type of CTA you use, either of these could end up being more suitable. For example, if your marketing video’s goal is to collect customer testimonials or survey your audience, including a CTA at the beginning would be an excellent idea. But if your business is looking to sell a niche product, the better call would be to settle for the post-roll CTA. That would focus on converting only your most valuable prospects. There is also the option of including CTA’s mid-roll, which for many brands has proven to be the optimal solution.
3 more CTA placement options
1. Editing CTAs Directly Into Your Video
One of the most basic and effective ways to include CTAs in your videos is to bake them right in. There are two ways to do this. The first is to include a screen, often at the end or during the video that indicates what the viewer should do next.
2. Include Annotations
Annotations that “pop up” on YouTube videos from time to time are another opportunity to promote your CTAs. You would recognize these as the little bubbles of text reminding you to subscribe to the channel, comment, or view another video.
3. YouTube Ad Overlays
If you have Google AdWords enabled for your YouTube channel, you can add an Ad Overlay to your videos that will link to anywhere on the web, unlike Annotations. The best part? There is currently no cost for Ad Overlays. You only pay for the views you buy when promoting your video with an AdWords campaign.
4 Informational CTA Ideas
Use this type of call to action when you want to entice your audience to look for or gain additional information such as:
1. See More
2. Explore
3. Show Me How
4. Start Watching
These CTAs pique the users’ curiosity, which makes them particularly useful for marketing campaigns focused on increasing brand awareness.
4 Lead Generation CTA Ideas
Lead generation CTAs are most effective when you’re looking to collect data on your user base, such as a name, an address, an email, etc. Some
1. Register Now
2. Apply Now
3. Try X For Free
4. Book Today
These CTAs invite the users to participate in an event, to purchase something, or just provide their info to get something in return. Marketers can later use that information to optimize their consumer targeting or to collect a user database of potential customers, which they can then for example to send newsletters.
4 Transactional CTA Ideas
Transactional CTAs focus primarily on driving as many sales & conversions as possible.
1. Shop Now
2. Add to Cart
3. Don’t Miss Out!
4. Sign-Up
These CTAs encourage users to purchase your products and services and are used to close prospects in your bottom funnel and are some of the most common CTAs used for video content
5 Promotional CTA Ideas
1. Enter to Win — You can invite your users to enter a competition or a giveaway you are doing.
2. Free Trial — Offer your audience an opportunity to try your product or service before deciding to settle for it.
3. Fill Out a Short Form — If you’re interested in gaining feedback from your customers, why not ask them to fill out a form? That could help you improve your services, which would, in return, help you build your brand loyalty.
4. Watch Another Video — This CTA would invite the users to engage with more of your marketing content, which could help you establish a dedicated audience.
5. Ask a Question — This method is particularly effective for engaging your audience in a conversation about your brand or products. This generally results in acquiring some insightful feedback.
Best practice is to test a variety of CTAs to see which works best for your business.
CTA Best Practises
1. Make your CTAs as specific as possible — Many brands fall into this trap of not making their CTAs accurate enough. An excellent example of a specific CTA would be “Learn More About Our Services Here” instead of “Learn More Here.”
2. Optimize your CTAs for mobile — Make sure that the action your CTAs will lead to is optimized for mobile users. The most notable example would be if you were collecting answers to a poll or a survey. In that case, you’d have to make sure the entire survey is visible and user-friendly on phones, or people might not even bother.
3. Make your CTA both visual and verbal — That means you should utilize the power of annotations or clickable buttons! Include them alongside the verbal CTA you’ll feature in the content itself.
4. Make it obvious — This point might seem obvious, but many make the fatal mistake of putting their CTAs in obscure or hardly visible places. In short, ensure it’s crystal clear that you’re inviting your viewers to take action!
5. Use strong verbs — As you’ve likely already seen from our CTA examples, you should use highly actionable verbs.
6. Communicate in your customers’ language — By speaking as your customers would, you can better identify with them.
Wrap-up
At VideoFresh, we are integrally involved in helping our clients produce videos that perform. And since we have long term relationships with our subscription clients, we strongly recommend our clients to include CTAs in their videos so that their video content will perform better driving more sales and conversions.
Are you interested in working with a video production company that understands how to optimize your video content with effective CTAs, lets chat.