The purpose of every marketing and sales effort, whether delivered via email, a landing page, social media, a digital ad, or a conversation, etc., is to motivate the recipient to take a real next step in their buying journey. We contend that CTA (call-to-action) conversion rates serve as a measure for bridging output and outcomes in the metrics chain, and ultimately a measure of Marketing and Sales effectiveness. As such, it should be included on your dashboard.
This blog covers 3 key CTA topics:
- Why you need to connect your CTAs with the Customer Buying Journey to achieve your growth goals
- How to measure CTA effectiveness
- Where to put CTA measures on your dashboard
From One Step to the Next
A CTA can be something as concise as a Register Today, Schedule a Call, or Share This post. It can also be a strong benefit statement such as Take these 10 Steps to Improve Customer Experience Now, encouraging a visitor to download a document after reading a post, watching a video, listening to a podcast, or attending an event.
CTAs provide insight into engagement behavior and as such support the behavior dimension associated with opportunity scoring. Most organizations today have some way to score potential opportunities in terms of fit (such as type or size of organization) and behavior (who and what kind of interaction).
As you think about your CTAs, consider how to construct them to support incremental conversations and conversions at each stage of the customer journey with the purpose of increasing the level of engagement and interaction. This will help you decide how to measure the value of the CTA as well as use the CTA to support opportunity scoring.
Why You Need to Connect Your CTAs with the Customer Buying Journey
There’s more value to a CTA than a click-through rate. Well-designed CTAs help visitors move through their buying journey. They can directly impact your customer acquisition and market growth. Therefore, the first step in the process is to connect your CTA to the customer buying journey. The closer you can connect the CTA to the various interaction points on the customer buying journey, the more measurable and effective your CTA will be.
Once you’ve completed this step, establish a value for each CTA. You will need this to create a CTA metric that accounts for two aspects of your CTA: user behavior (did they act?) and the value of that action. This approach provides a way to measure more than just the CTA click-through rate.
When you connect the CTAs to the buying journey, you’re also able to measure the overall engagement flow. That is, the conversion of one CTA to the next one, that CTA conversion to the next CTA, and so on. This will show the overall flow, effectiveness, impact, and contribution of the CTA string, ultimately enabling you to make your CTAs and your Marketing more effective.
How you configure your CTA tracking will impact how well you can measure and report on its value. Various tools such as your marketing automation platform and website traffic tools can be used to help you gather CTA data.
Where Do You Place CTA Measures on Your Scorecards and Dashboards?
Campaign scorecards and Marketing performance dashboards are important performance reporting tools that help you know whether your Marketing is hitting the mark and what is moving the needle. Each of these tools serves a purpose and CTAs play a role for both. Once you establish your measures you can integrate your CTA measures along with the rest of your metrics chain into your reporting tools. Creating your measures and these tools takes skill. It is a skill worth developing or hiring as these are important tools. They help you make better decisions and ensure everyone on the team is on the same page.
Are the CTAs for a campaign working? This is a question answered with a scorecard. Ideally, there is a CTA for each phase of a campaign with an associated performance target. If you’re not sure what kind of performance targets to set, explore using benchmarks and industry statistics. Now that you have a way to measure your CTAs you can add this data to your campaign scorecards.
How well are your CTAs performing and are they within operating parameters? This is a question answered with a dashboard. In the metrics data chain, CTAs are an output that affects an outcome, such as the adoption rate for a new offer or an increase in the share of wallet among an existing set of customers.
Therefore, CTA measures go below outcomes on your dashboard. They will provide insight into why an outcome is or isn’t being achieved. Keep in mind that CTA measures most likely provide only one data point that provides insight into outcome movement.
Are your CTAs in the right place on your dashboard? Might be time for a dashboard review.
FAQ:
A1: Because every marketing and sales effort is intended to motivate a real next step in the buyer’s journey. CTA conversion rates help bridge outputs (content, campaigns, touches) to outcomes (adoption, acquisition, growth). As a result, CTA conversion rates are a practical indicator of effectiveness and belong on the performance dashboard.
A2: Because the value of a CTA is not the click itself; it is the movement it creates in the buying journey. Well-designed CTAs help buyers progress from one stage to the next, increasing engagement and enabling measurable progress toward customer acquisition and market growth.
A3: CTAs provide observable engagement behavior, which supports the behavior dimension of opportunity scoring (alongside fit). When CTAs are designed to drive incremental commitments across the journey, they become signals that help determine which opportunities to nurture and which are sales-ready.
A4: Start by mapping each CTA to a specific journey stage and interaction point. Then assign a value to each CTA so measurement reflects both:
- Behavior: did the visitor act?
- Value: how meaningful was that action in the journey?
This enables measurement of not only single CTA performance, but also the conversion flow from one CTA to the next (the “CTA string”), revealing where engagement accelerates or breaks down.
A5:
- Scorecards: Use scorecards to assess whether campaign CTAs are hitting targets at each campaign phase. Each phase should have a CTA and a performance target (benchmarks can help set initial targets).
- Dashboards: Use dashboards to monitor whether CTA performance is within operating parameters and to diagnose outcomes. In the metrics chain, CTAs are outputs that influence outcomes, so CTA measures typically sit below outcomes on the dashboard to help explain why outcomes are moving (or not).
A6: Treat CTAs as journey-stage commitments, not generic buttons. Map them to the buying journey, value them based on the action’s contribution, track conversion from one CTA to the next, and place CTA metrics appropriately in scorecards and dashboards to improve decision-making and execution.
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