A Call to Action is NOT an afterthought. It’s not something you ‘think about later once the video is made’. Your entire narrative needs to be the set up for the CTA.
A CTA is the closing card at the end of your video, your closing statement that you leave your audience with, the punch line to a joke. It’s you, telling your audience what to do now. If you don’t tell them what to do, how will they know? Don’t make this too hard for them. Don’t leave room for them to get it wrong. You’ve come too far to stuff it up at the end.
So before your team starts writing, know what you want your audience to do after watching it. Is it to sign up, download, purchase, subscribe and find out more? It could be as simple as ‘call us today to find out more, before it’s too late’.
You’ll notice that CTA starts with a doing word, followed by urgency, followed by the why? Leave one of these things out and you’re setting yourself up to fail.
As unoriginal as that CTA is, it’s still stronger than just a phone number on the screen. You need to tell your audience what you want them to do. Don’t make them use up too much brain power to guess. Because let’s face it, they probably won’t. Sure you could easily jump to the conclusion to call, but why not take out the hard work for your poor viewer.
By sharing the why you are inviting the viewer into the story for them to make it their own. This is what you want. Donald Miller of Storybrand talks a lot about your Business needing to be the guide to the client and that The client is the hero. And he’s right. Your audience wants to be the hero that saves the day and you are their side kick that’s going to make it happen.
So whatever words you use for your CTA you need to make sure it’s obvious and easy to do. Don’t leave room for them to think about it and come back later, because they won’t. Most importantly, let your audience know how you are going to make their life better if they take action today.
That’s a lot of pressure for a few little words. Which is why, your entire story should be a lead up to this one point. Your audience needs to know what life on the other side of responding to that CTA will be? How are you going to make their life better?
Your story needs to challenge or motivate your audience by explaining the why, and those little words at the end are simply the what or the how. So don’t leave them off.