50 Most Powerful Call-to-Action Phrases

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Are you looking to increase your conversion rate? Call-to-Actions are an essential part of the conversion process, but what kinds of Call-to-Actions should you put on your website? CTAs should be simple yet effective, and should catch the attention of your visitors. The formula for a successful CTA page title consists of combining such sales buzzwords as “free,” “discount,” “offer,” “gift,” “guarantee,” with action-oriented words like “click,” “download,” “request,” and “send.” Listed below are 50 powerful Call-to-Action phrases that visitors can’t resist clicking on.

50 Powerful Call-to-Action Phrases

  1. Download now
  2. Click here
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  7. I urge you to…
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  10. Immediate download
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  14. Get it now!
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  19. Come see us today
  20. Reserve your spot now
  21. Come in today
  22. Start your trial
  23. Start your free trial
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  26. We’d like to hear from you
  27. I can’t wait to hear from you
  28. Limited availability
  29. Limited time offer
  30. Best value
  31. For more details call…
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  45. Request your FREE quote today
  46. Just reach for your phone
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  48. Contact us
  49. It’s important that you respond promptly
  50. Download our eBook for more information

Click here to learn more about powerful CTA phrases that increase clicks!

Now that you know what attention-grabbing Call-to-Actions look like, you can implement your own. Don’t just copy and paste the CTA phrases from the list above. Tweak the CTA phrases so that they apply specifically to your company and your products and/or services. For example, instead of just saying, “Start your free trial,” you can say “Start your free trial with (insert company name here) so your CTA is more personalized. Use these phrases/Quotes as a template for your website’s CTAs, sit back, and watch the clicks roll in!

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Soft Sell Advertising: What it is, Why it works, and How to Execute

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When it comes to advertising, businesses as a whole tend to be aggressive. They let you know exactly who they are, what they do, and why you should buy from them. Even in inbound marketing, companies will try to tie the topic of conversation in with their products or services in some way. However, this isn’t the only course of action. You can also reach your target audience and successfully engage them by advertising in a more subtle manner. Such a strategy is known as soft-sell advertising.

What Is Soft-Sell Advertising?

Soft-sell advertising is a more subtle form of advertising. The goal behind soft-sell advertising is to evoke a positive emotional response. The idea is that the customer will then subconsciously connect the response they had to the brand that invoked it. Businesses that implement soft-selling marketing will often create ads that are warm or humorous, as these tend to be the ads that invoke the most positive feelings.

The History of Soft-Selling

The idea of soft-selling first emerged in 1914, when Theodore MacManus published an ad that would become the model for the soft-sell. The ad was essentially an essay on the burden of being the best in one’s field. The ad was for Cadillac, yet Cadillac wasn’t mentioned a single time. Nor was there an illustration that ran with the ad. Yet the ad was incredibly successful.

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The Benefits Of Soft-Sell Advertising

The following are some of the reasons why you should incorporate soft-selling advertising into your marketing strategy:

  • Less pressure on customers – Because soft-sell ads don’t push products or services, customers will feel less pressure to buy. The pressure is apparent in hard-sell ads, and it’s often off-putting. Using soft-selling ads, you give your audience the ability to discover your brand and make a purchasing decision on their own time.
  • Increase brand awareness – Even though you’re not pushing your brand into their faces, audiences will be more likely to share your content. The reason? People don’t share ads, they share content. When you create a soft-sell ad, you have to focus on the quality of the content and not on the sale. If you are able to create high-quality content that invokes a positive emotion, your audience will share that content. People will share content that elicits a positive reaction to their friends, thereby increasing your brand awareness.
  • Build more trust – Another result of having to focus on content quality is that you’ll build more trust. You’re basically offering your audience something of quality without asking for something in return. This shows them that you care about more than just sales. As a result, they’ll be more likely to explore your brand further. Not to mention that building trust is essential to building long-lasting relationships.

Examples of Soft Sell Advertising

Soft sell advertising has grown in popularity, both in regards to inbound marketing and outbound marketing. The following are a few examples of effective soft-selling ads:

  • Yeti – Yeti is a company that sells coolers and outdoor accessories. They filmed an entire series of videos called Hungry Life showing a well-known chef spending time in nature, where he picks plants, goes fishing, and prepares his meals outdoors. Although Yeti’s coolers do make an appearance, they are never showcased or talked about. Yeti is obviously targeting a specific audience by showcasing a specific lifestyle. That audience will then make an emotional connection between that lifestyle and the Yeti brand.
  • Burt’s Bees – Burt’s Bees uses their founder as the spokesperson. This is perfect because he essentially represents their main buyer persona. The Nature of Burt video introduces Burt, who explains who he is. He’s likable and funny, and their target audience can relate to him. What makes the video so effective is that it builds an emotional connection between the viewer and Burt, all without ever promoting the brand or its products.

Implement a Soft-Sell Advertising Strategy Today

Because many companies focus many of their marketing efforts on generating brand awareness, they tend to be overly aggressive. However, soft-sell marketing can be incredibly effective in terms of engaging your audience and building trust. As such, you should be sure to include soft-sell marketing tactics in your inbound marketing strategy.

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direct vs indirect marketing 1

Direct vs Indirect Marketing

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You may not realize it, but all marketing efforts can be categorized in one of two ways — direct marketing or indirect marketing. On the surface, direct vs. indirect marketing is relatively easy to understand.

Difference Between Direct and Indirect Marketing

Direct marketing involves engaging with leads or customers directly. For example, sending a customer an email that contains a promotional offer. Indirect marketing is a strategy in which you put yourself in a position to be found by leads. Consequently, allowing them to engage with you instead of just directly engaging them. For example, writing a post on your website’s blog. Which leads can find through external links or through a search engine, is a form of indirect marketing.

Both direct marketing and indirect marketing can be effective strategies. However, to make sure that you implement them effectively, it’s important that you not only understand what the advantages of using each are, but also what the potential disadvantages are of direct vs indirect marketing.

Direct Marketingdirect vs indirect marketing 2

Direct marketing includes a number of traditional marketing strategies that everyone is familiar with. For example TV commercials are a form of direct marketing. So are billboards, magazine ads, radio ads, and telemarketing. That’s not to say that digital marketing can’t be direct. For example, email marketing and PPC advertising are also forms of direct marketing. You’re essentially trying to find and address a specific audience — and you’re trying to get them to take action right away. The following are some of the advantages to such a strategy:

Advantages

  • You can identify specific audience segments, thereby allowing you to connect with people who are likely interested in your product or service already. For example, if you run a TV commercial, you can choose a time slot on a channel that you know your audience is watching.
  • If you know the audience you’re addressing, then you can personalize your messages, thereby allowing you to nurture leads and build stronger relationships. For example, using the data you have to segment your email list allows you to send more relevant content to your recipients.
  • The data you collect from your direct marketing efforts is more measurable. For example, you can track your email response rate to determine how effective your direct marketing strategy is and to make adjustments accordingly.

While there are plenty of advantages to implementing certain direct marketing techniques, there are some potential drawbacks as well. These can include the following:

Disadvantages

  • If you’re too overzealous, your direct marketing efforts may cross privacy boundaries and may even come off as spam, which will hurt your brand reputation.
  • You have to have an understanding of who your audience is and where you can find them. Otherwise, you may be advertising to people who aren’t interested in your brand, which is a waste of time and money.
  • Your overall reach won’t be as widespread since direct marketing requires you to focus in on a specific audience to be effective.

Learn more about indirect marketing strategies

 

Indirect Marketing

Indirect marketing is essentially marketing in which you’re not trying to sell a specific product or service. For example, content creation in the form of a blog of email newsletter are forms of indirect marketing. A lot of social media marketing is indirect as well. For example, if you’re simply engaging in discussions or posting links to informative articles. The idea behind indirect marketing is that you’re nurturing relationships, building brand authority, and generating brand awareness. The following are some of the advantages of indirect marketing:

Advantages

  • You provide value to your customers without coming off as self-serving, which helps to build your brand reputation and increase brand trust.
  • Indirect marketing is typically much less expensive than direct marketing.
  • Indirect marketing is a long-term strategy, which means that your efforts will continue to have an impact throughout the future. For example, you might write a blog post that someone reads years later.

As beneficial as indirect marketing is, there are a couple of disadvantages when compared to direct marketing. These disadvantages include the following:

Disadvantages

  • Tracking performance is more difficult. This is because you’re not honing in on specific customers — you’re casting a wider net.
  • Indirect marketing efforts may not have an instant impact — it may take some time before they begin drawing in new customers. As such, it can be frustrating not to see an immediate impact on sales.
  • Because it’s a long-term strategy, indirect marketing requires constant attention. Whereas direct marketing tactics can work on their own, indirect marketing functions as a whole. This means that you need to be constantly working at it. There’s basically no end in sight.

You are now well aware of the differences between direct and indirect marketing.

As you can see, when it comes to direct vs indirect marketing, both direct marketing and indirect marketing have their share of advantages and disadvantages. Instead of choosing one over the other, the best course of action is to use a combination of both direct and indirect marketing. This will allow you to see both short-term and long-term results, especially if you’re careful when it comes to avoiding the potential drawbacks that both strategies can present when used improperly.

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5 Holiday Email Templates for Salespeople

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When it comes to email marketing, you should always welcome the opportunity to do something a little bit different. Changing it up is a great way to keep it fresh and to keep your leads interested. One of the best times to do this is during the holiday season. The following are five email templates that you can use to send out emails appropriate for the holiday season that will help boost your open rate and that will engage your audience through email:

1. Gift Guide Email

Sending out a gift guide email is an excellent way to reach prospects who are still in the early stages of their customer journey. A gift guide email gives you the chance to stay in touch (and thereby, to stay on top of their minds) and to remind them who you are and what you have to offer. Using a gift guide format, you can list several of your products and services as well as how they might benefit the prospect. Considering the fact that the holiday season is very much gift-oriented, this is an appropriate way to connect with your prospects.

2. Discount Offer Email

Promotional content is not something that you want to send out too often, but it’s typically considered appropriate during the holidays due to the fact that it’s a very commercial season in which everyone is buying gifts. As such, it’s completely appropriate to send prospects discount opportunities to encourage them to purchase certain products or services. Avoid having your email come off as an advertisement by addressing the prospect in a more lighthearted manner (this tends to be okay to do during the holidays when people are less formal).

Email Opening Lines That Actually Work

3. Holiday Checklist Email

If you’re working on a deal with a prospect, then sending out a holiday checklist email is a great way to help them stay on track so that they won’t fall behind on deadlines. Reminding prospects about upcoming deadlines can be a challenging task, especially since you don’t want to sound pushy. Providing a “holiday checklist” that lists the dates and the milestones that they should reach on those dates is a great way to not only remind your prospect about upcoming deadlines, but to give them an overview of all of their milestones and deadlines that they can refer back to at any point.

4. Upselling Email

Trying to close new sales shouldn’t be your only priority. The holiday season is also a great time to revisit old customers. Using their purchasing history, suggest products or services that may appeal to them. Besides simply trying to upsell them, thank them for their previous purchase and offer a discount that shows them how thankful you are to have them as a customer.

5. Personal Thank You Email

Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to send out thank you emails to your prospects and clients. Not only will they appreciate a brief email that thanks them for working with you or taking an interest in your brand, but it’s also an excellent way to stay on top of their minds and to touch base with those who you haven’t heard from in a while.

These are five examples of email templates that can be quite successful during the holiday season. The holidays are an opportunity to not only be a little more playful with your email templates and to have the excuse to send out promotional material, but they are also a great opportunity for keeping your brand on the top of your audience’s minds and to stay in touch with both existing clients and prospects.

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Exploring The Differences Between B2C and B2B Email Marketing

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How you market your brand depends greatly on who your audience is, which is why b2c (business to consumer) and b2b (business to business) marketing are very different strategies. As such, your email marketing strategy is going to depend heavily on whether or not you’re marketing b2b or b2c. The following are some of the differences between b2c and b2b email marketing to keep in mind:

Optimal Send Time

Knowing when to send your emails has a big impact on whether or not they’re opened. B2c customers are more likely to check their emails in the evenings or on the weekends since they are busy working during the day. B2b recipients are more likely to open them during work hours since they often check their work email regularly throughout the day.

Spam Filters

Spam filters work a bit differently with b2b and b2c customers. B2b customers often use filters that check for certain keywords before deciding whether to inbox the email or automatically sort it into the junk folder. With b2c customers, it’s more about building a good sending reputation with minimal complaints.

Personalization And Segmentation

While personalization and segmentation are important for both, they’re a bit different. With b2c customers, you’ll want to personalize products and content based on individual taste. With b2b customers, personalization should be a bit more subtle, such as by highlighting new stories within their industry or providing case studies that match their needs.

How Customers Respond

B2b customers buy from people, whereas b2c customers buy from brands. This means that when you send emails to b2b customers, you should expect a potential reply. Make sure that you include contact information, such as a phone number and who the email is from so that it’s easy for b2b recipients to reply. This isn’t as important for b2c customers.

The Difference Between B2B and B2C Marketing Automation

Triggers

Using triggers to automate emails to your b2c customers helps to drive them back to your website. However, email triggers don’t work as well for b2b customers. Instead, use triggers for phone calls from your sales team instead.

Buying Cycles

B2b buying cycles are typically longer than b2c buying cycles. This is because you’re not just nurturing a single type of customer like you would in a b2c situation. Instead, you’re having to nurture a group of decision makers. Not to mention that in b2c situations, customers are more likely to make faster decisions based on emotion.

The Role of Content

Because buying cycles are longer in b2b situations, your customers will benefit more from educational and non-promotional forms of content, such as white papers, whereas b2c customers might be more moved to action by testimonials and case studies right off the bat.

These are some of the differences between b2c and b2b email marketing that you should know before crafting your email marketing campaign. The last thing you’ll want to do is to use b2c tactics for your b2b email marketing strategy (or vice versa) since this will hurt your ability to nurture your leads.

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What Are The Benefits Of Using HubSpot Marketing Automation Tools

What Are The Benefits Of Using HubSpot Marketing Automation Tools?

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Creating a successful long-term inbound marketing strategy requires that you tackle several different tactics on different fronts, such as optimizing your site for SEO, creating high-quality content for your website, producing email newsletters, and engaging with followers on social media. Because these tactics all require constant attention to be effective, you should strongly consider the use of HubSpot marketing automation tools as a way to simplify your workload. The following are four reasons why you should be using HubSpot marketing automation tools:

1. Collect and Analyze Data to Improve Your Marketing Efforts

HubSpot’s analytics tools can help to collect data across all of your marketing platforms and provide you with metrics that you can use to the benefit of your marketing campaign. For example, you’ll be able to see what blog posts are outperforming other posts based on metrics such as visits, social engagement, click-throughs and captures. You can use this information to determine what kind of content is more effective or what elements of your blog posts need to be changed. For instance, if you have content that is receiving tons of views but no click-throughs, it may be because your calls-to-action are poor.

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2. Personalize Communication With Your Customers

Marketing automation allows you to segment your email list, which makes it easier to personalize your emails and send more relevant content to your recipients. This is done by gathering data from your opt-in forms and using that data to segment your email list into different groups. For example, if you run an online clothing store, then segmenting your list into male and female will prevent you from sending content about women’s clothing to your male audience, which would hurt your ability to properly nurture leads through the sales funnel. The use of email segmentation will make your email marketing strategy more efficient and effective.

3. Schedule Out Your Work Ahead of Time

One of the important aspects of a good content marketing strategy is making sure that you continually publish new content on a regular basis. Your readers are going to expect new content at certain times and if you don’t publish it on the same days at the same times, you’ll lose readers. Of course, remembering to manually publish new content, whether it’s a posting an article to your blog or sending out a tweet, is time-consuming. Marketing automation allows you to create your content and posts well ahead of time and set them to be automatically published at specific times on specific dates.

Read our article: Content Marketing Misconceptions

4. Send More Qualified Leads to Your Sales Team

One of the challenges that a lot of businesses face is having their marketing team on the same page as their sales team. Sales personnel often don’t know what state of the buyer’s journey prospects are on, which makes their job more difficult — especially if they are sent leads that aren’t qualified. HubSpot marketing automation tools allow you to collect extremely useful visitor information, including their history of actions on your website, which in turn can allow you to send more highly qualified leads through to your sales team when they are ready.

The use of HubSpot marketing automation tools allows you make more efficient use of your resources and gives you the opportunity to see exactly what is and isn’t working in your marketing strategies. You’ll end up saving a lot of time on smaller, more time-consuming tasks, which you can then dedicate to more important aspects of your marketing campaign, such as engaging with and nurturing your leads.

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Drip Email Marketing vs. Lead Nurturing Campaigns; When To Use Each

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Many marketing tools seem similar and are often mistaken for one another. Two tactics that are often confused are drip email marketing and lead nurturing campaign. It’s true that there are similarities in the way they work. However, they are two distinct tactics that serve different purposes. You should have both in your marketer’s toolbox to use when appropriate, especially with attraction marketing. Let’s learn a bit about each tactic and when they should be used.

Email Drip Marketing

Emails are a huge part of modern marketing. One email marketing option is email drip marketing. Named after drip coffee makers, this marketing tactic sends out emails at specific timed intervals. Time is the only factor used to indicate when an email is sent. Nothing else.

When should you use email drip marketing?

  • Educating prospects on all the products and services in your company’s portfolio.
  • Keeping your brand in front of your customers while they are contemplating a purchase.
  • Announcing new products or services for your business.
  • Showcasing best sellers in your portfolio.

A well-crafted drip email campaign can educate and inform your audience. However, done too frequently, or used only to pitch products or services, your audience may perceive these emails as spam.

[Read About Interactive Email Marketing Trends Here]

Lead Nurturing Campaigns

A lead nurturing campaign is not based on timed emails. It is based on the lead’s behavior. When a lead performs a specific behavior, it triggers an email with targeted information to be sent to your audience. These emails are designed to guide the lead through the buying process.

This type of campaign depends on gathered information about the lead’s behavior. Specific behaviors that can trigger an email include:

  • Which whitepapers grab the lead’s attention
  • How many times they visit a specific page on your website
  • Which webinar they attend
  • Which of blog post category they spend the most time in

The goal of the emails sent during a lead nurturing campaign is to deliver useful information at critical points in the sales cycle.

A marketing automation system is ideal for lead nurturing. You can build full campaigns within the system that automates almost everything in the process. The power of marketing automation systems is their ability to capture key data. This then triggers the specific emails that nurture leads.

They Complement Each Other Very Well

Drip email campaigns and lead nurturing campaigns, if well designed, will do their jobs well. They both help leads engage with your brand and give leads the information needed to make an informed decision about your products and services.

They are each powerful tools in the marketer’s toolbox on their own, but working together, they are even more powerful. Coordinated campaigns can help close deals faster and keep your brand ahead of the pack.

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How To Nurture Your Leads With Email Marketing

How To Nurture Your Leads With Email Marketing

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Despite some claims that email is dead, it is still a highly effective way for marketers to connect with consumers. It is an integral part of inbound marketing as well as attraction marketing, and is a great way to send nurture leads throughout the buying process. Here are a few email best practices that will help nurture your leads.

Segmentation

The segmentation of your contacts database will help define your audience into categories. If you are unfamiliar with buyer personas, read about them here, as they will be extremely useful in segmenting your contacts. Segmenting be done in terms of geographic location, company type, role within that company, behavior, marketing intelligence, or any other category that could be valuable to your company. Use segmenting to your advantage by targeting those different groups with useful content based on their specific needs.

Read more

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Email Marketing vs Marketing Automation Software: Which Is Right For Your Business?

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Email is an essential part of marketing in many companies. One challenge many companies face is choosing which software to use in order to manage their email marketing.

On one hand, an email service provider like MailChimp or Constant Contact can send targeted emails out to select leads. It can also  provide reporting on how your audience opened the email and clicked through. On the other hand, marketing automation software, like Hubspot, offers the same functionality, plus a whole lot more. Marketing automation software has the ability to nurture leads throughout the sales process, as well as the ability to monitor website visitor behavior.

The challenge is determining which solution works best for your business.

Email Service Provider Vs. Marketing Automation

Your company’s marketing needs are going to be different from the business across the street. You will need a unique blend of marketing tactics to connect with your audience and maximize your lead nurturing. Deciding which of these solutions will work better for your business requires knowing the exact needs of your company and industry.

Here are some factors to consider between email service providers and marketing automation software:

You have long sales cycles that require multiple touch points. Marketing automation helps to make some of these touch points happen without human intervention. It is possible to use an email service provider to make some of these touch points. However, the process is manual each time and there is no tracking of how a lead responds.

Read About the 5 Benefits of Marketing Automation

You need to sort casual prospects from sales-qualified leads. You don’t want your sales team’s time wasted contacting prospects who are not ready to make a purchase yet. Marketing automation allows you to score and grade leads so that your sales team will know who is close to making a purchase. Email services do not offer this functionality.

You use your lead database to promote events and participation more than for nurturing sales leads. Some businesses do not have a dedicated sales team. They have a short sales cycle and don’t need personal follow-up to get customer purchases. Email service providers are actually a great fit for this type of business. The additional functionality of marketing automation is just not needed in this business model.

You want more insight into how well your marketing activities are working. This is where marketing automation comes out ahead. This software allows you to track just about every aspect of your marketing from email click-throughs to landing page statistic to normalizing your lead data. Email services just don’t have that capability.

Which is Right for Your Business?

Only you, as the owner of your business, can determine which solution would work best in your company. Email service providers work well for building brand recognition, promoting events, and enhancing customer loyalty. However, for those companies that want a more robust solution, marketing automation software is the best solution.

Now, which solution would work best for you?

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Email Marketing

Tips To Make Your Email Marketing Program Most Effective

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About 124.5 billion business emails are sent and received each day. With this high volume, it’s crucial to make your emails stand out. A smart email program provides opportunities to effectively communicate with your customers and prospects, leading to increased sales and revenue growth. Segmenting—by target audience, relevant message and place in the buying cycle—is key. In fact, research shows that 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales because of lack of segmentation. And Lyris’ Annual Email Optimizer Report found that 14.30% of respondents experienced better deliverability and greater revenue when segmenting their email marketing. Read more