how to construct a great call-to-action for your explainer ... · a call to action (cta) is an...

How to Construct a Great Call-To-Action for Your Explainer Video with 3 simple steps to follow

How to Construct a Great Call-To-Action for Your Explainer Video is an ebook created by www.breadnbeyond.com

http://www.breadnbeyond.com

Advertising online is all about engaging with people and getting them to interact with your brand or product. If you make a great commercial, explainer video, blog post, whatever, and get people to laugh or cry, but not engage with your brand, your efforts will be a waste.

Let's not kid ourselves, companies don't spend money on advertising solely to affect people's emotions, they do so in order to sell products.

That's why you need to carefully consider the “Call-to-Actions” (CTA) that's usually found at the end of every good explainer video (or blog post, Youtube commercial, etc.).

These days it's simply not enough to have an awesome video with a rocking script. You have to take it a step further and really engage with your audience. There are too many competitors out there, and customers are always short on time and resources. You have to offer them a reason to engage.

A call to action (CTA) is an instruction to the audience to provoke an immediate response, usually using an imperative verb such as "call now", "find out more" or "visit a store today" that you often you find at the end of most explainer videos (though sometimes you'll find them at the beginning or even in the middle of a video).

It needs to be strategically placed to urge the audience to engage with the brand being promoted. For example, you might prompt viewers to like your Facebook page, or offer them a free product in exchange for visiting your website.

At first glance the CTA might seem like a really simple thing, something that you can overlook and just throw together without much thought.

BIG MISTAKE! The CTA is one of the most important elements of any video and you should spend some time and effort to think about ways to make your CTA most effective.

If you don't engage your audience with a CTA there is a very high chance that they will forget about your brand and/or product.

Why? Because you're not offering them the next step for engagement, and instead they can just go on their merry way and forget all about you.



CTA's are actually really common, even outside of the business world. Let's use a non-business example to illustrate why they are so important. Let's say you're getting married. You hire a rocking wedding planner. The ceremony, the reception, the honey-moon, everything is fairy tale perfect.

Let's say you also put together some awesome wedding invitations. We're talking the whole nine yards here, expert printer, the finest quality paper, gold-colored foil.

But you forget to put the “RSVP” call-to-action at the end of your invitation, and when you send them out people are confused. People might wonder if it is an announcement rather than an invitation? Should they RSVP? If so, how?

And suddenly your picture perfect wedding turns out to be a ghost town all because you forget the vital CTA.

Brainstorming Your Call-to-Action

When it comes to wedding CTA's, it's pretty straight forward. “We hope you can join us on our special day, please RSVP here”. Boom, done.

When it comes to attracting customers or building an audience, however, you're going to have to take more time to craft the message. If you push too hard with a “FREE STUFF, CLICK HERE” message, you might drive people away.

On the other hand, if you're too lackadaisical with a simple “We appreciate your support, click here”, people might not be enticed to follow up. Crafting the perfect CTA is all about understanding your position, and the needs/wants of your audience.



The First Step

First thing's first. You need to know who you are, or more specifically, “who” your business is, what your business wants or needs, and how your viewers can help you accomplish it.

In other words, what are you trying to get viewers to do, and why is that important for your business? Are you looking for more website views? Trying to sell products? Raise brand awareness?

You should also consider what your viewers might want.

Let's say you run a subscription based online web magazine and you're trying to increase subscriptions. You make an explainer video explaining why you're the best new magazine on the market and offer plenty of reasons for why people should support it.

At the end you could create a CTA that urges people to visit your website and offer them a free 30 day subscription in exchange for a visit. This way, everyone wins. Customers get a free subscription and you get subscribers.



The Next Step

So by now you should be thinking about what you want and what your customers want. Now it's time to get to actually designing the CTA itself.

Let's get right into the nuts and bolts: keep it short and sweet. Attention spans are short these days, especially on the internet.

I would recommend that explainer videos themselves be kept short and to the point so you can get people to your CTA as quickly as possible.

I would also recommend the same for the CTA: short, simple, and to the point.

Don't write a huge paragraph trying to get people to click through to your website or social media page. Keep the verbosity down and use as few words as possible to convey your message.

You should also be precise. “Click for a free 30 day subscription”, “click here for a 1 minute intro”, etc.

Don't just say “click for an intro” because people won't know what they are getting themselves into. Building trust is always a key component, and specifics help build trust.



The Final Step

Finally, you have to consider what it is you're directing your viewers to. You have to figure out what your audience's preference for learning is.

Your CTA will be directing people some place, for something, so what are you directing them to? Another video? A podcast? A blog post? There are many options here and you need to make sure to consider them carefully.

With a CTA you can break this down to watching, listening, or reading. Often, you'll combine at least two of these previous elements.

If you're reaching out to music lovers, for example, an audio podcast might work, well-educated people like to read, and many other people just want to sit back and watch.

That's that folks. Just remember to keep things short, precise, and to the point.

Also, keep your audience's needs and preferences in mind. By applying the above three steps you will be well on your way to designing an effective CTA!

Speaking of CTAs, here's ours!

If you haven’t joined our FREE 8-days Course on Explainer Video creation, you should hop on board now. JOIN NOW FOR FREE.


http://www.breadnbeyond.com/explainer-videos


About this eBook This eBook was created by Breadnbeyond to help individuals and companies understands the process to create an explainer video, as well as how an explainer video can help them grow their business.

About Breadnbeyond Breadnbeyond is an Indonesian based studio that specializes on explainer videos and visual animation to help businesses and startups grow.

More Information Visit Breadnbeyond's website for more ideas and inspiration for creative directors or marketing officer from technology companies.

To learn more about Breadnbeyond, visit www.breadnbeyond.com/explainer-videos/ or contact us directly at +1.877.619.3488 or [email protected].

You are welcome to republish excerpts from this eBook, as long as you link back to www.breadnbeyond.com for attribution. Please also share this eBook in its entirety with anyone you think would be interested.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.



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