2 Unique Ways to Use a Call to Action

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Mark Kilens
Mark Kilens

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Your business needs to generate leads, and you hopefully know how to use calls to action. Calls to action exist to help you generate the ever elusive qualified lead. You incorporate calls to action into every website page, piece of content, and in all of your marketing channels.  But, have you ever added a call to action to your website menu?

That’s right, your website’s menu. Think about it, your website’s menu is one of the most clicked elements on your site. Everyone reads the menu and it’s the starting point for most visitors.

I recommend we start making website menus more actionable and effective. There are two ways we can achieve this goal.  

The first way is to add a call to action to your top-level menu. This will allow anyone that’s visiting one of your website pages to see the call to action in the menu.  HubSpot does this in our menu. We include a “free trial” call to action in our top-level menu. It’s always there, and it’s a relevant call to action for most of our visitors.

Here are some examples of top-level menu calls to action:

  • Product Tour
  • Buy Now
  • Free Consultation
call to action in menu

The second way to make your menus more effective is to create calls to action in the secondary-menu, or sometimes known as child pages. For example, say you have a Resource or Education Center - something I recommend every business create. Under the menu item “Resource Center,” you could create five secondary-menu items that are set up like calls to action. Meaning, they start with a verb and explain what content a visitor would be downloading. Here are some examples of the secondary-menu calls to action:

  1. Download Whitepapers
  2. Watch Product Videos
  3. Download Industry Guide
  4. Read Case Studies
  5. Subscribe to Newsletter

Your goal is to make it clear what action visitors should take as early as possible in their visit. This strategy can prevent visitors from looking through your website and possibly not finding the call to action that resonates with them. Implementing this strategy allows you to be much more proactive in helping guide the visitor to consume the content they want to consume.

Are you going to add calls to action to your menus? What do you think about this idea?

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