Try to think about the times you found yourself signing up for a service, trying out a product, visiting a website, subscribing to a channel, sharing your contact info, or downloading an ebook.
Many of us can admit that we mostly did it because a good call-to-action (CTA) convinced us to do so. And that’s basically what these CTAs are meant for — inspiring real action from those interested in your content.
Given the high video consumption by consumers and the predictions that the rate will even be higher in a few years to come, there’s absolutely no excuse not to include a CTA in your marketing videos, especially if you have a goal you want it to achieve.
To get you started on how to end a video or make it actionable, there are a couple of things you need to take into consideration in order to ensure that the CTA you end up with is practical, creative, and good enough to achieve its purpose.
What CTA Styles Should I Choose?
Videos can use more than one type of CTA. Text is the most popular of all partly because it’s easy to implement. Other types include image, audio, and buttons.
Text and auditory CTAs can be placed anywhere in the video. Normally, there are three options to consider when it comes to deciding where to place a call-to-action in a video – beginning, middle, or the end.
Of course, there’s a particular group of viewers who for some reasons won’t finish watching your video and so, when you place your CTAs in all the three mentioned places, a larger portion of your audience will have the chance to act on your message, enabling you to maximize the conversion rate.
Image calls-to-action are great when you want to include visuals in your CTA. It could be a specific color, logo, or other branding elements. For example, Yodle’s video call-to-action below is a convincing image complete with luring details targeted at small business owners. It would be hard for them not to click play to get more information.
Then we have buttons, which are pretty good at adding interactivity to a video. A viewer can directly click on a button to make a purchase, get more information, contact you, watch another video, or take any of your intended actions.
Alternatively, you can incorporate several CTA styles in your video, like in this highly successful musical video by Coldplay, which urges viewers to donate and support Red Nose Day Charity.
At the beginning, there’s a text call-to-action, and as the video fades, they incorporate an auditory call-to-action before finalizing it with a combination of a text call-to-action and clickable button.
Customizing Your Video Call-To-Action
Like we mentioned earlier, your video CTA has to be practical and creative, and this begins by first ensuring that it’s relative to your product, service, or sales process. Besides that, consider the goal of the video and then give it a CTA that complements it.
There’s no doubt that action words like Click, Buy, Download, Register, and so on make calls-to-action effective. But there’s no limit to how creative you want to get. You can also do any of the following:
- Ask a question
- Give free trials
- Incorporate forms to be filled out by viewers
- Ask your viewers to vote
- Recommend another video
- Introduce competitions and giveaways
Here’s an important point to note. These ideas don’t fit across all platforms. For example, social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram won’t allow you to incorporate forms, but you can do so on your website, particularly if you use a custom video player.
This means that if you have a single video you want to share across different platforms, you may have to customize the call-to-action for each platform. For instance, if the CTA on your YouTube video directs viewers to your website, a similar video on your website should incorporate a CTA that inspires visitors to take a different action.
Well, learning how to end a video or make it actionable doesn’t stop there. Make sure you go ahead and study these four creative call-to-action video examples I’ve rounded up because they correctly incorporate some of the ideas we’ve mentioned and perform well in achieving the goals apportioned to them.
1. Getting Your Viewers To Subscribe To Your Channel
Subscribers are those people who’ve given you the permission to share your content with them. For a marketer, this translates to an audience that’s looking forward to watching your marketing content.
Through a call-to-action, you can give your viewers a chance to become part of your subscriber base, like in this GoPro video created to promote their HERO3 camera.
Just seconds before the video fades, a bold button appears on the top right corner with the words “Subscribe”, and right below the button, there’s a lineup of suggested videos still by GoPro just in case you’d like to watch further and learn more.
2. Promoting Your Products and Services
Haven’t we all watched movie trailers and somehow longed to or made a decision to watch the movie itself? Well, it’s pretty much the same thing with promoting your product, services, or business.
For instance, if you are promoting an eBook, a report, a study, or research, you can create a short video preview and add information that will prompt the viewer to download the content.
ExactTarget applies a similar approach to marketing their mobile behavior report. The video gets the viewer interested in the report by sharing fascinating stats and all along, there’s a clickable text call-to-action atop the video plus a download button towards the end giving viewers a chance to download the report.
3. Ask the Viewer To Contact You
Before you ask your viewers to contact you, first you must ensure that your video has what it takes to engage, attract, and even convert them into leads and loyal customers.
Nowadays, it’s more difficult to capture and retain the attention of a customer because there’s countless marketing content everywhere competing for their attention. That aside, if viewers quickly lose interest in your video, your call-to-action won’t be of much help.
But what if there’s way to counter all that. Ever tried personalizing your videos? That is, addressing your target customers individually, probably by their name or creating a video that is unique to their interests and preferences, like in the video below?
If not, that’s something you might want to do next because it’s an easier way to get them excited and inspire them to take real action, including contacting you, just like the video above does.
4. Driving Traffic To A Landing Page or Website
Using YouTube has its pile of challenges and one of them is that it’s easy for the viewer to be distracted by other luring videos.
So, in order to get their undivided attention and have a chance to turn them into leads, it’s best to use a CTA to direct them to your landing page or website.
Recently, YouTube introduced YouTube cards, which could be used for such purposes. End screen calls-to-action are also another popular option.
The old and famous Dollar Shave Club’s marketing video, for example, uses an end screen call-to-action in which they listed their website’s address and used a few more cool words to make the CTA more creative.
Final Thoughts
By now, you can see clearly why your video, particularly a marketing video, deserves a call-to-action. The clearest of all reasons is that when you combine a great video with a creative call-to-action, it helps your audience to know what to do next. More often, there’s always something you hope to achieve with a video as a marketer and adding that call-to-action gets you closer to meeting your goals. With several styles to choose from, remember to pick what works better for your video. Lastly, be creative while at it and let the video’s purpose also guide you in deciding which video call-to-action to work with.