B2B Marketing 101 - Calls to Action
All business to business (B2B) marketers are familiar with Calls to Action (CTAs) used to motivate prospects to act. In traditional media (pre-internet) CTAs were important because there was no way to interact with potential customers; the advertising had to speak to the customer and get them to do something, preferably NOW (”Call our 800 number in the next 5 minutes and you’ll receive…”). I would consider this is a single layer Call to Action because the media speaks directly to the end-user to engage with the 800 number…a live sales person.
The internet actually introduces a 2 layer call to action structure. The first layer is to get the prospect to visit the company’s website in the first place and that is accomplished using traditional media as well as various online (SEM and PPC) marketing methods. There are many people more qualified in that area than me so I will focus this article on the prospects that are visiting the website; the second layer CTAs. The goal of website CTAs are to uncover and capture qualified prospects.
