The CTA Conundrum: Naturally Including Them in Your Blog Posts

As one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) content repositories of your website, your business blog should be rife with posts that help you lead your readers to wherever you want them to be. Let’s say you’re calling readers to action to check out the many events in SEO and content marketing Toronto has to offer.

Using calls to action, one of the most effective tools in your marketing repertoire, you can do just that. But there’s a catch.

Awkward CTAs don’t work – they can even backfire.

You need to naturally and seamlessly weave the CTA into your blog post. Many business owners and webmasters, however, aren’t exactly artfully skilled writers or marketers. Luckily, there are ways to circumvent the dreaded awkward CTA and make everything sound (or in this case, read) natural.

First, let’s break your blog posts into two types.

Hardsell Posts and Core Posts

No, these aren’t radically new types of content you need to know about – these are just arbitrary categorizations that will help you with CTAs. Hardsell posts are blog posts that drive your readers to an actual conversion; microconversion or otherwise. Core posts are everything else – they don’t have to really sell anything or lead to conversions directly.

Confused? Look at it this way: hardsell posts are blog posts that have direct contributions to your sales funnel. Examples would be posts specifically talking about beneficial features of your product or service, with the intent of leading readers to a landing page. Core posts are focused on a different goal, like driving more traffic for a keyword or being more “share-able” in social media. Of course, a blog post can be both, in which case it should be categorized as a hardsell post – you’ll see why later.

Core Post CTAs

Let’s start with the easy one: core posts contribute indirectly to your marketing goals and do not lead straight to your sales funnel. This also means their topics can range from subjects tangential or thinly related to your industry, which really makes it hard to include a natural CTA without making it sound as if it was an afterthought.

For core posts, there are a few ways you can add CTAs that while not directly leading to conversion, still help your bottom-line along in one way or other, among them: Adding CTA to related blog posts (for better reader engagement) Adding CTA to social media platforms (to increase your social following) Adding CTA to email subscription (for lead capture and nurturing)

You get the idea. Now, let’s go for the tough cookie.

Hardsell Post CTAs

The approach to hardsell posts is much more thorough. Your core posts have a single editorial process: creating a thesis message around which the post will revolve. Hardsell posts have a twofold editorial process: creating the thesis message and then crafting the marketing message.

Here’s an example hardsell post:

Topic: SEO and content marketing Toronto calendar

Conversion goal: Have readers sign up to events through affiliate link

Thesis message: A number of local events about SEO and content marketing are worth going to

Marketing message: Secure your tickets to events online easy and hassle-free

So, why all the fuss? Because when you develop content that from the start incorporates a marketing message, hardsell CTAs won’t be awkward as you deliver them. Typically, hardsell posts are aligned to sales funnels and drive particular (micro)conversion.

Use CTAs correctly and you can drive lots of traffic wherever you want, but first, you need to naturally include them into your blog posts.

Image Courtesy: Powtoon

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