Copy And
The marketing podcast where online service providers learn how to write copy that sounds like them, but converts BETTER.
I’m Sam Burmeister, your guide on this copy adventure. As a conversion copywriter & sales psychology expert, I learned the ‘right way’ to sell in my decade-long sales career.
Now, after spending the last 6+ years writing copy for hundreds of successful launches and helping dozens of entrepreneurs write better copy every week…I know what sells and what’s working in online business right now.
And what’s working is copy AND – Copy and messaging, design, strategy, navigating AI and more...
Together, we’ll put the pieces of the marketing puzzle together - and you will write copy that both serves AND sells.
Copy And
38. How to get people to click on your emails and sales pages
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In this episode, Samantha breaks down calls to action from every angle: what they are, where they go, what they should say, and why most people are setting them up wrong. CTAs show up in every single piece of copy you publish, so getting them right isn't optional — it's the difference between a website that converts and one that just sits there looking pretty.
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Hey friends, and welcome back to Copy and the marketing podcast where I teach you how to write copy that sounds like you, but converts better. My name is Sam, I'm the founder and lead copywriter here at Nomad Copy Agency, and today we're talking about calls to action. Yes. Again, we're talking about calls to action. Why? Because every piece of copy has a call to action in it. So we're gonna talk today about what is a call to action? What do good calls to action look like? What do crappy calls to action look like and what should we say? On these buttons, where do we place them? We're digging all the way in. If you listen to this episode and you're like, Sam, I want a swipe file of all of your calls to action, great. I have that available for you. It's, I think, 20 bucks. You can grab it at the link in the show notes, and they're called clickable a F CTAs because we want your buttons to be clickable af. Okay, so let's dive in. First of all, what is a CTA or call to action? CTA of course stands for call to action. You guessed it. Gold stars for you. What is a call to action? A call to action is a button or link that people click on. That helps them take action on whatever it is that you are selling. Call to action can be on a free page. This is something like, download it here. A call to action can be to something paid. All it is, is something that is clickable so that people stay in your ecosystem. It's important for people to click through your things for a lot of reasons, one, so that they land on the part where they're supposed to pay you or give you their information. You're running a business, not a sorority. We're not looking for friends here. We are looking to make money. So those calls to action get people to click to make you money. Also, from an SEO standpoint, we love calls to action. We love when people click through our website because it makes you more reputable to the algorithm gods. Okay? So we want people to click. We want to have calls to action. We want people to navigate your site and for it to feel super freaking easy. I think we've all had that experience where we wanna go out for dinner, we go to a restaurant's website, and we cannot find any information on this website other than like. A form to fill out to contact them when all you really need to know on that website is like, where's the menu? So we need a button for the menu. Are they open right now? We would love to have some hours and then maybe like their address so that we can get there, right? So calls to action are not salesy. They are not bad. They are helping people navigate your business in the way that's most advantageous for them. So we need buttons. In the example of this restaurant, we need buttons. So that people know where to click to get the information that they need to make a purchasing decision so that they can show up at your restaurant or to your online business. Okay? So that's what a call to action is. Some best practices with calls to action. Here, when we are talking about emails and webpage, we want buttons not in text links. Now, you might say Sam, but it's an email. Why do I need buttons in an email? A button makes sense visually on a sales page, but not in an email. Here's what I'll tell you is that a button in an email gets about 50% more clicks than an inex link. When I say iNEXT link, what I mean is if I were to say, click here for more information and click here is blue and underlined, that's an Intex link. Whereas a button would say something like, click here and have like a different color background or something. Okay, so that's what a call to action is. A call to action is something clickable that people do to get closer to buying from you. Next question is then where do we put them? Because every piece of copy needs a call to action. If you want people to buy from you and stay in your world, even if it's a simple nurture email that's catching up with your list, you want people to have an opportunity to buy from you. Again, you're running a business, not a sorority, so we want people to click through and purchase, and we want those buttons to be really easy to find. So on any webpage or any sales page, anything that is published on your website, you need a call to action. Above the fold. Above the fold is the first scroll of your website. So when people land there, a hundred percent of people who land on that page are going to see things within the first scroll. It is the best real estate on your page. So whether it is your homepage or about your services, a sales page, an opt-in page, you wanna have something that they can click that is visually very clear to them above the fold. Your services page, your about page, even the things that quote unquote aren't selling anything, should have a call to action above the fold. This again goes back to the reason why. One, we wanna make it really easy for people to buy from you, and two, we want the algorithm to like you, so. What does that maybe look like on an about page that could say something like, hi, I'm Sam, your favorite copywriter. When you're ready to work together, click here or get started now. That's what your call to action says is it gives people an action that they can take. Because they're sussing you out as a person to see if you're somebody that they wanna work with. So make sure that it's easy for them to get to work with. Or if you're showcasing your skills, you could say, see my portfolio here. Something that gives them another way to click around so that the algorithm likes you, so that they get more entrenched in your world. So above the fold on every single page sales pages, it should be obvious. Your opt-in pages homepage should take them somewhere else on your website. Every page that you publish should have a call to action button above the fold, within the first scroll of the website, so that's in your above the fold. Second place on your sales pages, this is where people get really tripped up on your sales pages. You wanna have multiple calls to action. Here's what I've seen happen too many times, is that I'll go onto somebody's sales page, whether to rewrite it or to edit it inside of copy on demand. And I will get to that page, and they might have a call to action button above the fold. And then we have a problem section, and then we have another section and another section and an about section and an investment section. And only under that, once we've scrolled over halfway down the page, is there another opportunity to click to work with you? We want those calls to action probably every two to three sections so that people can click. And the reason for this is buyer psychology. If you're selling something. That's over a certain dollar amount. Typically, anything over $500 people don't tend to purchase. The first time they land on your site. They will purchase after multiple visits. So what we wanna do there is we want to target them. If they're repeat visitors and they just came back so that they could buy, great. They've gotta a call to action button above the fold. If they needed to know exactly what was inside of your offer, then great. We wanna have a call to action button. Next to the What's Inside section on that sales page. However, there are sections on your sales page that we don't wanna have a purchase button. We want people to take action when they are in a mindset of potential, not problems. So typically when you write a sales page, you're gonna have your above the fold. You're gonna have something about the transformation of what you're offering, and then you're gonna go into a couple problem sections. We do not want to have call to action buttons in the problem sections because we don't want people taking action when they're in a place of fear. We want them to be acting from a place of potential. So that should help you decide where to put call to action buttons on a sales page. I would say every sales page needs to have, at minimum, a final call to action section that has a call to action button in it that says something like, Hey, you made it this far down the page. If you don't act now, when will you join the program here? That will typically be at the bottom of the page. You're above the fold at the very top. And then at minimum, and this is if it's a short sales page, we're gonna wanna have another call to action in the investment section. If you have additional sections where you are helping people see what is possible for them when they purchase, then add more call to action buttons throughout your sales page. I wanna add something here is that in the past I have said that all of your call to action buttons should say the same thing. This was true several years ago, and I said this very publicly on a few podcasts that had thousands of views. I rescind what I previously said because buyer psychology does not change, but trends do. So typically in the past, what we would see is somebody would say, buy now, buy now, buy now. Buy now on all of their. Call to action buttons. What we wanna do now is have those buttons be as conversational as possible. So for example, if you said, here's all of the benefits, then we would say, get these benefits here. So what goes on your call to action button should be relatively conversational depending on where it's at on your sales page. If you're not feeling creative, then it's totally fine to just say bye now on all of your call to action buttons. But don't be afraid to mix it up and have a little bit of fun. It's a great opportunity to add some personality. So that's where they should go on. Your website is everywhere above the fold on your sales pages. Yes, above the fold and throughout your page, just not in the problem sections. And then in your emails, where should your buttons go? Because again, you can have Intex links, but you want at least one button so that people know that this is an email that they click on. What I encourage you to do is go to your email inbox and find your most recent e-commerce email. Could be from your favorite shoe store, a local business, something. You're gonna see a lot of buttons throughout. I use the example of Noble all the time. They're one of my favorite brands for lifting shoes. What they have throughout their emails is they will show a shirt and then I get the gear and then they will have pictures of their shoes and say, find it in your size. And then they will have another section selling another one of their offers. There are a ton of photos and buttons with minimal texts throughout because people know that a photo is worth a thousand words and they can look at something and say, I want that click here. There are multiple buttons throughout their sales emails. What their emails are not doing is giving us an update on how the CEO's recent vacation went, what they've learned recently. And by the way, here's an Inex link at the very bottom of the email saying, and if you're lifting this summer, buy my shoes, please. No. Again, we are running, I keep saying this, we're running businesses here, friends, so we want people to be able to click on our business stuff. So inside of your emails, what I recommend to all of my clients, because most of us are not running businesses, that they're easy to photograph because we're not running e-commerce stores. Everybody that I write for is a service-based business. We might have brand photos, but we're still a service-based business in general. In your emails, you wanna have your calls to action be buttons that are clear on both a white or a black background so that they're accessible even when people's phones are in night mode. Wanna have a button In the first 50% of the email it, we want it to be very clear that you want people to click on your email, and we wanna make that clear by having a button laid out at the top. Again, we want buttons, not in text links because in emails, statistics show that buttons get clicked three times more than Intex links do. So there you have it. Those are most of my best practices on making sure that your stuff is clickable af. If you want my full best practices guide, including swipes of what I put on my buttons and on my client's buttons, you can grab that in the link in the show notes and grab clickable AF CTAs. And as a final tip here, what goes on your buttons should be positive. It should be forward thinking. So for example, we don't wanna say something like, get the download. That's what you want them to do is get the download. What your people want is to start or become something. So we could say start budgeting now. We could say something like, become a copywriting badie. See how those are more transformative, that people are going to become a good copywriter. They're going to start taking action. They're not doing a download. They're not getting a PDF. They're not buying now because again, you want them to buy now. They want. The transformation that you offer. So if you want the full list of what I would put in the text on those buttons, grab it at clickable AF CTAs. Otherwise, just remember, we want buttons over in text links. We want those buttons at the top of every email, every website, and every sales page. If you need somebody to take a look at your website, if you're not getting clicks, let me know. A great way to do that is to grab a, can you write this for me? Hour starts at $497 us. And in that hour, I can go through and audit and edit a sales page really well. We can improve your buttons, your button text, your button placement, as well as all of the other copy on your page. And if it's more in depth than that, you can grab two hours. If you have questions, reach out to me. You can find me at samantha@nomadcopyagency.com, or you can find me on Instagram at nomad.copy. I can't wait to hear from you, and I hope you're getting hella clicks.