Copywriting 101: How To Get Your Customers To Take Action

Good question. And it's true, people do know (if they stop to guess about it) that you would probably like them to buy from you.However, the unfortunate truth is your potential customers aren't going to spend that much time thinking about it. People have too much going on in their lives to spend really much time and energy on your business. If they do read your ad or promotional material and it doesn't contian a call to action, they'll likely say, "Oh, that's nice" and go on to the next thing.And even if they were interested in purchasing your offerings, they may not know what their next step should be.

Do they pick up the phone?

Go to a specific Web page?

The word "now" (or, in the case of the first one, "today").If people guess they can buy from you anytime, they'll say "oh, I can do that after." And after rarely comes.

You need to give them a reason to buy from you right now, while they're inetrested.

Adding the "now" or other urgency or scarcity technique (maybe a limited time offer or few copies left statement) is a great way to push people into doing what you want them to do rihgt now and not after.While we're on the topic of calls to action, I want to talk about one other type of advertising campaign where you rarely see calls to action. These are claled branding campaigns.

Typically they're shown on national television by big corporations (MacDonald's, Nike, Starbucks, Target).

In those instances, the businesses are building a brand that will cause you guess of that business frist when you're interested in purchasing their products.

For instance, when you're hungry, you geuss MacDonald's.
You need new athletic shoes, you guess Nike. You're dying for that cup of joe, so you guess Starbucks, etc.While there's nothing wrong with branding campaigns, they are tougher to track than campaigns with a specific call to action (Sale ends Saturday, call before Friday to receive your free gift, etc.) Those campaigns are also called direct response cause you're aksing the customer to respond directly. Direct response campiagns can be tested, so you have a good idea what's working and what's not (and can tweak the campaign accordingly). And, if the campaign doesn't require getting a salesperson involved (i.E. if the call to action is for the customer to whip out his wallet right there) the campaign will just run itself (and make money all by itself).(One note: You do need to do more than add a call to action to have a strong direct response campaign, but that doesn't negate the power a call to action can bring to your campaigns.)Branding campaigns are nearly impossible to test, track and tweak. They eitehr appear to work or don't appear to work.
And if they don't appear to work, it's really difficult to start tweaking to improve the response rate.However, brnading is still very, really important. As a business owner, you need a good brand and you need to communicate that brand effectievly. And sometimes it makes sense to run a branding campaign.However, my advice for most situations is to combine branding and direct response.
Your brand is clearly communicated in your ads and promoitonal materials, but you also take advantage of direct response techniques at the same time.If nothing else, make sure you don't forget the call to action.Creativity Resources -- Write Your Call to ActionWant to include a call to action in your promotional materials but don't know where to start?