Mon 5 Mar 2007
Calls to action while doing the painting
Posted by Mark White, Blog Consultant in Blogging Basics , Business Blogging FAQs
Well, this weekend, I’ve been doing a fair bit of decorating at home in readiness for our imminent arrival at home. This had a couple of consequences: firstly, it reminded me that I’m still no Michelangelo with a paintbrush and roller and, secondly, it gave me the opportunity to listen to the radio rather more than I have done for a while.
One of the things that intrigued me, apart from the fact that I still recognised a lot of the music, was the way the adverts have developed since I used to listen to radio driving about in the car. The medium has clearly evolved quite substantially since then and become more sophisticated - certainly, advertisers have developed a number of different ways of attracting and holding our attention with their adverts.
Putting my marketing hat on for a moment, I found it interesting to listen to the way in which the calls to action were done. Of course in days gone by, the only real call to action was to get people to phone for more information. Interactive and immediate. You call, you can ask questions, you can chat to someone.
Obviously that’s still used but, naturally enough, advertisers have added websites into the mix over the last few years, so we now get:
Go to www dot la-de-dah dot com for more information.
That’s okay, but while it’s immediate, it’s not interactive in the case of most websites. Unlike using the phone, you can’t easily ask specific questions so you have to make do with the information available. Surely what we need to get back to is the interactive element that a telephone call could offer so that we can advance the selling process more quickly? If so, then presumably that’s something that blogs can help us with by providing an online route for the conversation to start to take place.
The other thing is how to encourage people to visit your site. Rather than a simple “go to”, how about “join us at” or “visit us” or even “talk to us at”. Somehow that seems more inviting and so more likely to be acted upon. Do you agree? If you do, then what call to action would you suggest?
Or maybe the paint fumes have gone to my head and I’m just imagining the whole thing.
March 12th, 2007 at 3:22 am
I might even consider calling users to a website to download a coupon, free ringtone, etc., something of value to the audience. In contrast to a phone number, now you can have the listener fill out a form and begin to collect data, build listeners profiles and even grow your email database for future communications.
March 16th, 2007 at 12:13 am
All good suggestions, Nicole - thanks! Building a database is a critical element of any online activity so adding to the information you gather by whatever methods is great.