The Importance of Adding a CTA to Videos

Video marketing is becoming one of the most popular ways for companies to share information with consumers. Whether the content is for marketing, sales, or training, videos provide consumers with a more entertaining way to consume information about your brand. Videos offer more comprehension, with viewers retaining 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in the text. Successful videos can quickly grab viewers’ attention and provide them with a more visually appealing way to engage with your content; however, videos must have some sort of visual or auditory cue to drive action. This is where a call-to-action becomes a critical component of your video marketing strategy.

A call-to-action, also known as a CTA, serves as the visual or auditory cue that encourages someone to take a desired action. The goal of including a CTA is to prompt an immediate response from your customer based on your goals. CTA’s can be customized to fit whatever the desired action for your viewers may be, whether to subscribe to a mailing list, take the viewer to your website, or provide downloadable content, for example.

Whatever your goals may be, including a call-to-action in your videos are a must-have, here’s why:

Importance of Video CTAs

Guide Customers Through The Sales Funnel 

Regardless of which stage your customer is at in their consumer journey, they’ll need a call to action that helps direct them to their next step. Whether they are just learning about your product or service, or they are ready to make a purchase, not having the proper CTA at the right time could be the only thing stopping them from taking the following steps.  In the awareness stage, this could look like adding a button to your video that leads to a downloadable product information page, while in the action stage, it could be a hotspot within your video that’s linked to a web page where they can buy your product. Your CTA can be fully customized to help your audience reach the desired action to ultimately help your company reach its goals. 

Improve KPIs

Key performance indicators are essential to track the success of your video marketing campaign. While KPI’s often vary based on the sales funnel, common KPIs include leads, conversions, and ROI. Based on the stage of the funnel your customer is in and the goal of the video, you can create a CTA that makes it easy for them to take the desired action. 

Increase Engagement

By including a call to action in your video, you ensure that viewers aren’t just comprehending the information, but taking action! Your content must encourage engagement so that your viewers stay interested so you can maximize the impact of your video investment. Interactive video allows you to include a CTA in the form of a clickable feature which further increases engagement by motivating viewers to participate. High engagement levels guarantee that your video will make a lasting impression on your audience and help you establish stronger relationships that lead to sales. 

Elements Of A Successful CTA

A call to action significantly increases your video engagement, but what if there was a way to make your CTA even more powerful? To amp up your CTA, you can spend time focusing on elements such as when it appears, design, and copy to impact how compelling your CTA is within your video. 

Let’s go over some of the best practices for a successful call to action:

• Timing: With customers on media overload, we can’t assume that every viewer will watch your entire video. Uncertain completion rates are why it’s most beneficial to include your CTA at the beginning of the video to ensure that every viewer can interact with your content and take action if they are interested. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t also include one throughout the video in the corner at all times, or at the end of your video for those viewers who stuck it out and may want to know their next steps. 
  

• Design: You want your CTA to stand amongst your other content, so it should be exceedingly prominent and noticeably clickable so your viewers won’t overlook it. Things such as color and size will play an essential role in enticing your viewers to click through. You’ll need to find a balance between creating a CTA that stands out while still complimenting the visual design of your video. 

• Copy: There are various types of CTAs, such as informational, lead generating, and transactional. The one you choose will depend on your video content and the ultimate goal of your video campaign. To create an actionable CTA, you’ll need to be concise and use strong verbs. For example: “Buy Now” is short and clear what the expectation is, whereas “Click Here to Buy the Product” is way too long to put in a CTA.

If you want to create a more personalized experience for your audience, you can use text-based personalization or conditional logic to display CTAs based on where the users are within the buyer's journey or what they’ve shown previous interest in within your videos. Personalized CTAs convert 42% more visitors into leads than untargeted CTAs, so if you’re looking to move customers through your sales funnel quickly, you may want to consider personalizing your CTA copy.

Here's an example showing the power of using personalization and CTAs together:

How can I design an interactive CTA within my videos?

Mindstamp is an interactive video solution that allows you to make any video engaging by adding interactive features such as buttons, hotspots, images, and more to your existing marketing or sales video. With Mindstamp, you can easily add your CTA using any interactive features and customize them to fit your needs. The most common form of CTA is a button that can be easily added to your video and customized using the Mindstamp software—you can also use a variety of other interactive elements Mindstamp offers, like clickable images or hotspot to drive users to the next step. You’ll have the ability to decide what action will be triggered when the button is clicked, the button content, font size, in addition to text, background, and border color. 

Learn more about how to add a CTA button

Final Thoughts…

Without a call to action, your viewers will be left wondering what their next step is to connect with your business. Providing them with a clear message is a great way to prompt the viewer to take immediate action and drive them to stay connected. A call to action will ultimately help your business guide customers through the sales funnel, improve KPIs and increase overall engagement with your videos. 

Mindstamp’s interactive video platform allows you to add a customized CTA to any video and elevate your content to its full potential. Click here to get a demo of Mindstamp and see how it can enhance your business. Or start your free trial today to start converting more leads with your videos!