Sales Driven Marketing Hub

Calls to action are essentially the bait on your inbound marketing line.

They’re what entice your prospects to click, learn more about your company, and hopefully convert them from visitors to leads.

But what types of marketing CTAs are the most effective?

Let’s take a look at six different types of marketing CTAs and how they can affect your overall conversion rate.

1. End-of-Post Banner CTAs

These are the most common types of marketing CTAs you’ll see around the web. They’re typically the button-like graphics you’ll find at the end of a post.

Although these are great value-adders to any post—and I encourage everyone to continue using them—they may not yield the highest conversion rate.

That’s because not everyone will make it to the end of your post. What’s more, seeing as this type of CTA is so ubiquitous, many readers may develop “banner blindness” and simply glimpse over or ignore your CTA altogether.

During a recent study, Pamela Vaughan, the principal marketing manager on HubSpot’s optimization team, found that these end-of-post banner CTAs contributed an average of just 6% of their posts’ total leads. 

2. Slide-in CTAs 

These types of CTAs slide into the page as a reader scrolls down. Pamela found that although these perform better than end-of-post CTAs, they still aren’t as effective as text-based CTAs (more on those later). 

These may perform slightly better because visitors see them sooner and they’re interactive, catching the reader’s eye.

3. Pop-up CTAs

Oh the controversial pop-up. These CTAs get people all worked up. While some praise their effectiveness, others loathe how they interrupt the user experience.

As we explained in our post about the pros and cons of pop ups, these exit, entry, static, and event-trigger pop-up CTAs can help capture qualified leads (granted they are related to the content the reader is consuming).

On the flip side, some visitors may find them annoying, especially if they don’t have any intent to interact with your business just yet.

4. Sidebar CTAs

Sidebar CTAs can be effective because they occupy prime real estate on your blog and are static, meaning they don’t change with every post (as end-of-post banner CTAs tend to do). This means that your most relevant and highest converting CTAs should be placed here. 

What’s more, these CTAs should be placed above the fold so that they’re one of the first things visitors see.

5. Anchor Text CTAs

The following two types of CTAs were found to be the most effective, mostly because they don’t look like CTAs.

An anchor text CTA is a standalone line of text linked to a landing page, styled as an H3 or H4 heading. 

According to Pamela, “In every single post we tracked, the anchor text CTA was responsible for the largest percentage of that post’s leads (by far). In fact, between 47% and 93% of a post's leads came from the anchor text CTA alone.”

6. Internal Link CTAs

Internal link CTAs are internal links that point to a landing page. They might looking something like this:

Make sure your home page is optimized and that it’s designed well. These are both crucial aspects of the anatomy of inbound marketing.

Or this: 

If you’re just getting started with inbound marketing, you might want to download our free inbound marketing campaign checklist. 

Overall, HubSpot found that “between 83% and 93% of each post’s leads came from anchor text CTAs and internal link CTAs.” Along with not looking like a typical CTA and appearing earlier on in posts (the faster you satisfy a visitor’s needs, the happier s/he will be), these CTAs are also more relevant. They’re delivered directly in the text and can even include keywords that organically brought a visitor to the page in the first place. 

Conclusion

To sum up, the more relevant a CTA is, the better it will perform. Therefore, take the time to not only try out different types of marketing CTAs, but also be aware of how relevant the offer you’re linking to is to the content at hand.