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(This is a direct transcription please excuse any Typo’s.)
The subject of today’s podcast is ‘call to actions’ on your website and it’s come from a question from a guy called Rob who works in marketing for a recruitment company in the north of England. He asked, “What can he do to have a good call to action on the website and what would I suggest?” That’s the subject of today’s podcast so let’s get into it.
Hi there listeners! This is Denise from Super Fast Recruitment with another podcast. This time it is all around what action would you like people to take when they land on your website. As always you may be listening to this on iTunes but you may access and download the recording if you head over to the Super Fast Recruitment blog and also there will be either a transcription or there will be some show notes of this particular podcast that you can read to your heart’s content.
Calls to action – The whole point of having a website is to promote your brand and to get your visitors to take some form of action when they arrive. You’ve done all of the hard work so what is it you want them to do? There are 4 to 5 main actions that you want someone to take when they land on your website.
The first one is they are going to have a good look around and you want to have some nice engaging content. You want to explain your value proposition to them and ideally have a blog where you can have some good valuable content that speaks into their needs. So that is No. 1. You’ve got to have a nice compelling website because you’ve got to have them on your website long enough for them to make a decision about whether to contact you or not or whether they want to take the next step.
Who hasn’t stood outside a restaurant having a look at what’s going on in there and what the food might be like and what’s on the menu particularly when you are on a holiday before they decide to wander in is exactly the same as when people land on your website. So No. 1, it’s all about having great content.
Ideally what you want them to do is pick up the phone and contact you and say “I have a number of roles I would like you to help me fill” or “I am a really hot shot candidate and I would love you to find me a job.” Or alternatively, if you are a large recruitment company it could be that it is somebody wanting their first break into working as a recruitment consultant.
What you want them to do is call you. Depending on where they are in the buyer’s cycle, they may or may not do that. So they may take an alternative action and one of those alternatives could be to fill in your contact form. On all websites, people tend to have a contact form. It can often be incredibly boring. It’s just, add your name and email address. It gives the impression, “We’ll contact you when we feel like it”.
Go and have a look at our contact form on our website. It’s superfastrecruitment.co.uk/contact-us.
What we have on ours is a paragraph. So someone lands on the contact form and they are thinking “Should I give them my email or not?” If you have an engaging statement for example;
“You probably arrived here. We may be able to help you. Don’t be shy. Fill in our contact form”
We also have our picture there as a branding item and you might want to this as well.
What you want to do is encourage people, reduce that friction, and make people understand that you are a friendly person. That is something that many people forget about on the ‘contact us’ page to make it and compelling and why people should contact you.
We’ve talked about an ideal scenario – you want them to pick up the phone. Secondly, you want them to fill out a contact form. But what if they are in a different part of the buying cycle? What if they are not quite ready yet to start engaging with you? Well, the next best thing that we want to be doing is grabbing their name and email address so we can start to market to them in the future.
Now, why would they want to give you their name and email address? Well, they might want to do that because you’ve got something interesting for them. In all honesty, if you’ve got “Sign up for our newsletter!” It’s probably not going to cut it anymore. It did many years ago but nowadays it is like “Well, yeah whatever! What am I going to get in a newsletter? What are you going to tell me about?”
Unless you’ve got a reason, for them to take action like your newsletter has some really good interview skills tips on it or it’s got some market information or it’s got a salary survey or something like that, then chances are, they are not going to sign up for your newsletter. However, they may well sign up for job alerts or they may well sign up for a notification when hot candidates come on board. Again, those are 2 reasons that you are giving them to actually sign up.
I think one of Rob’s questions would be,” what exactly could I give them so they give me their name and email address?” One of the things to do is to provide something of value. In marketing jargon, this is called an ‘ethical bribe’. When we think about the laws of influence and reciprocity – I give you something of value and you give me your email address. You’re probably going to market to me later, you give me something and that will be useful for me.
So what could your ethical bribe be? There are so many things that it could be but what I would say is – What are the key needs of your market? On our website, you will see that currently we have what we call our 5 Strategies Series and it’s the ‘5 Key Marketing Strategies for Recruiters’.
Now if somebody actually downloaded that information, you’ll get a series of emails. You will find that we lay out the 5 Key Marketing Strategies so that if you took action and do them consistently, it will make a huge difference to your business. It is a valuable email series. We also have it as a free report and we give it away halfway through the email series so you can just keep it as a PDF. That is really useful information.
Anything like a series of tips, ideas, suggestions, a checklist – a 10 point checklist on how they can do XYZ. Anything that appeals to your market. What is their greatest fear? What is it that they like help with? Not sure? Well, pick up the phone and speak to a few of them and find out what would be useful information.
Something that we always suggest to people as well is, have the sign-up box in more than one place on your website. You will notice that there are a number of places that you can sign up on our website to receive our free report. You’ll notice that as you start to look on our blog that as you are scrolling down, a pop up appears. It is pretty unobtrusive on the right-hand side. If you’ve been to our site a few times it disappears because it recognizes that you have been there. You can put your name and email address in and we’re going to send you something.
It’s about having something of value to get a potential client or candidates somebody’s name and email address. Somebody then is raising their hand. They are showing some level of interest and then you can start to engage with them and have a conversation with them online. They are going to begin seeing more of your information because you are sending it to them via email.
‘Call to actions’ don’t need to be complex. A mentor of mine always says “You just need to tell people to do something, Denise.” That would be the advice that I would always give to other people.
Here are a few examples;
“Pick up the phone and have a free no obligation consultation with us.”
“Pick up the phone and let’s have a chat.”
“Pick up the phone and let’s have a conversation, ask for Jane, and here’s the number to call. We will look forward to having a conversation with you.”
As you can see some friendly chat, that makes all the difference.
Quick summary then – What we’ve got is, you’ve worked hard to get people to your website. What do you want to be doing next? You want to get some form of call to action. I talked about 5 things that you can do. Something I didn’t mention was CVs. Of course you can get someone to upload their CV but ideally, you want someone to pick up the phone and have a conversation with you or to give you their email address so you can start marketing to them.
People arrive at your website. You can get them to either call you, to fill in your contact form or ideally to give you their name and email address so that you can start to build a relationship with them through email marketing.
This is Denise from Super Fast Recruitment answering Rob’s question and its bye for now!
Show Notes:
1:25 – The whole point of having a website
1:46 – Have engaging content
1:58 – Explain your value proposition well
2:39 – You want them to pick up the phone
3:17 – Fill in your contact form
3:37 – Go and look at our contact form – http://www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/contact-us/
4:08 – Make people understand you are a nice friendly person
4:36 – “Grab” their name and email address
4:47 – They’ll give you their name and email address because you have something of value to them
5:20 – They may sign up for job alerts, notification when hot candidates come on board
5:50 – The ethical bribe
6:11 – What could your ethical bribe be?
6:27 – 5 Strategies Series – http://www.superfastrecruitment.co.uk/
7:02 – You can write a series of tips, ideas, suggestions, a checklist
7:33 – Make your call to action offer relevant
7:42 – Have it on more than one place in your website
8:10 – It’s about having something of value to get somebody’s name and email address
8:32 – Call to actions don’t need to be complex
8:45 – Have a free no obligation consultation
9:21 – Quick summary
9:36 – Upload CVs
This podcast was hosted by Denise Oyston. Follow us on Google+
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