We're proud to offer lead generation and marketing automation services, as I'm sure you're aware, but what we love most is that we can find out which CTAs are most effective.
At the bottom of most of our blog posts you'll be used to seeing a "Call to Action" as they're called, but what success do companies see from such buttons?
How can we improve lead generation techniques?
Is there are another way to lead website visitors further into your website?
Let's find out...
Conversion success comes in the most surprising of places
HubSpot has revealed the surprising outcome of a study when analysing their marketing blog's conversion rates.
Taking eleven posts that produce above-average numbers of leads on a monthly basis, writer, Pamela Vaughan, discovered that although business best practices suggest 'end of post' CTAs are key - it was the anchor text URLs driving the biggest conversion!
In fact, more frightening for marketers - end of post banner CTAs contribute an average of just 6% of posts' total leads.
Read the full study from HubSpot here.
HubSpot found that between 47% and 93% of a post's leads came from the anchor text CTA alone.
In the blog post, Pamela explains that the defines anchor CTAs as those that are in H3 or H4 formatting, but in reality she accepts that anchor text can even be in a normal block of text.
Why don't end-of-post CTAs perform as well as expected?
It's true that in 2016 we have all grown accustomed to seeing ads, usually in the form of a banner and that is what most CTAs look like - a banner, therefore an ad. This all produces the subconcious thought of, 'The company is selling me something that I don't need', in the reader's mind.
Anchor text CTAs are generally speaking less sales-like, they look natural and have to offer a genuine related piece of content, because it is actually embedded into your text.
Additionally, how often does a reader read a whole blog post? By the time they've skimmed your post, they're scrolling back up before they've taken in the bottom part of your blog post.
If you want to read more about the science of successful calls to action, read Pamela's blog and get in touch with Thrive about how we can support you in implementing such methods.
Learn more about improving your search marketing
We have two excellent SEO ebooks available on our website that have been updated to suit your search marketing questions and requirements in 2016.
On top of those, we have a number of blogs on the subject, that will help you with the basics, including Meta Descriptions, Image Tags and the rest:
- 5 SEO Must Dos for a Searchable Business
- 5 Tips For Performing Keyword Research With Inbound Marketing Campaigns
- Set Up Google+ To Improve Search Visibility
Get in touch with Thrive for more information about search marketing, lead generation and our other marketing, web and design services.
