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The Downfall of the Call to Action

To the many people who are not in the field of online content marketing, hearing “call to action” brings to mind epic scenes from war movies like Braveheart, where the good guys build their allies for a final stand against the forces of evil. There’s lots of yelling, promising, and dramatic music, culminating in the drawing of claymores to show unity, in classic Three Musketeers fashion.

Three musketeers call to actionLegal Marketing 101: Call to Action

Unfortunately, a call to action (CTA) in the legal marketing world is a little less intense. It’s that “sign off” paragraph that you typically see at the end of a legal blog post:

If you or someone you love has been injured by someone in a car accident, you need a personal injury attorney. Call the law office of Smith & Jones at…

The idea behind a CTA is to nudge the reader in the direction you want them to go. Sometimes it’s to get them to sign up for a newsletter, or subscribe to the blog for more updates. In the legal field, however, CTAs are almost always pushing the reader to call the law office or contact them online.

The Problem With CTAs

The problem with CTAs is simple: Overuse.

The use of CTAs at the end of legal blogs has become ubiquitous. Worse, there are only so many different ways to write a CTA: It’s a simple idea that is not very conducive to a unique style.

The overuse of such a simple blog element has led to an expected result: Readers don’t notice them as much, anymore. And when readers don’t even notice a CTA, they’re not following it and taking the action you’re trying to push, such as contacting your law firm.

The online marketing group HubSpot recently published a report on their project to redesign the CTAs in their own blog. Tapping into some extensive analytics models, they were able to track exactly which CTAs netted the best result.

While the sample size was admittedly small, HubSpot found that an average banner ad CTA at the bottom of one of their blog posts were responsible for only 6% of the leads that post earned. The lion’s share of leads came from internal links and CTAs written into the post, itself.

Myers Freelance Crafts Legal Blogs the Right Way

Myers Freelance is a group of professional legal bloggers that keeps up to date with the latest developments in online marketing. We write and read hundreds of legal blogs. We know that CTAs at the end of posts can be a stale idea – nothing more than a paragraph that readers see coming, and skip once they get to it. Writing legal blogs is becoming more and more about satisfying readers, rather than search engines, and including canned paragraphs at the end of a post has its limitations. Get in touch with us to start a legal blog for your firm’s site today, and follow us on social media: Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.