Published: April 9, 2019
by Justin Difazzio
One of the biggest ways to drop the ball when it comes to your video marketing is losing people with your call-to-action. If you keep someone’s attention past the first five seconds of your video, you’re already doing better than most. To lose them at the end, when it matters most, is simply a tragedy.
But what can you do?
Turns out there’s plenty you can do, but the specific answer to this big question depends on your goal. Are you raising money? Collecting information? Trying to generate leads? All of those goals require two things: get viewers to further engage with your content and get them to DO something. Most of the time this can be accomplished by getting viewers to your website.
However, it’s more than just a lame “Visit our website to find our more about this thing.” You’d be extremely lucky if that works. When left to find things for themselves, the majority of people don’t find the effort worth the payoff. You need to direct them to wherever the object of the call-to-action lives. Is there an landing page for your donate button? What about a short form to collect information? Some contact information or a demo you can give? Lead your viewers directly to those things. Link to them. Drive them there. Otherwise, you can kiss them goodbye.
Need Call-to-Action Alternatives?
Sometimes just driving traffic from YouTube or wherever your video is hosted isn’t the only way you want to engage your audience. There are plenty of other options for nailing your call-to-action, as we’ll share below.
Drive traffic to another video.
Want to keep people engaged, informed, and aware of what you have to offer? This is the way to do it. Often watching one video can pique interest in visitors, and encouraging them to keep exploring takes advantage of this interest when they’re most likely to continue. So drive your content to related, “snackable” content, perhaps with another call-to-action. We’ve seen this done to great effect in several “choose your own adventure” videos like this.
Ask for their opinion.
Everyone likes to give their input. Just look at almost any comments section attached to a post in a public forum online (just don’t read the comments!) and you’ll see that this is true. One way to get people involved is to ask for their opinion. There are several ways to do this, whether you’re creating a poll or asking people directly to answer a question and join the conversation you’re hoping to start.
Give something away.
A similarly universal truth with customers is that everybody loves free stuff. And they love free stuff enough to give you information to get it. Having a giveaway is a great way to engage your audience. Tell people about it in your video, direct them to the landing page, and follow through on your promise. And you don’t have to make the giveaway something expensive or elaborate. Even a demo or a copy of some of your best marketing tips can be a draw. Let people see what you can do, and make them feel like they’re being let in on a secret or winning something valuable.
Ask them to join you at a social event.
Does your company offer classes? Invite people to apply to join you in them. Webinars are a good way to drive engagement and educate people about what you offer. Running a fundraiser? A dinner or cocktail hour is a good way to meet people and raise some money. Invite viewers personally, and make sure you provide the details or drive them somewhere they can see the details and RSVP. Requiring an RSVP makes an event feel exclusive and keeps you informed about how many attendees to expect. It’s win-win.
There are plenty more ways to make sure your call-to-action hits home with your viewers, but these are some of the most effective and proven methods we’ve found. What else have you noticed that has worked? What call-to-action can you just not resist? Stay tuned for more brief answers to big questions.