Choosing the right Call to Action for your content campaign

The goal of any piece of brand communication is to prompt an action on the part of the audience. But in the complex world of B2B, the best Call to Action (CTA) for your content is unlikely to result in an immediate purchase.

B2B buying choices involve lengthy sales processes, numerous decision-makers, and high costs, leading to careful consideration that can span several months. This contrasts sharply with B2C, where a single person typically makes the buying decision quickly, compressing the key stages of the journey – awareness, interest and action – into a short time frame.

To help guide fellow marketers and brand leaders, we’ve condensed some key B2B CTA examples in this article and provided guidance on when they are appropriate.

Why your CTA should reflect a different journey in B2B

In the world of B2B, your audience is spread out across different stages of their interaction with your brand. The funnel is much more elongated, and members of the buying group may loop back multiple times rather than following a linear, downwards journey. Your audience spans a range of engagement levels, with different people at different stages in their journey with you. This can make the marketing funnel an Subpar framework to use when thinking about calls to action in a B2B context.

When it comes to choosing the right CTA for your content, it’s important to step back and consider the wider context. It might be better to think about audience journeys rather than customer journeys.

Your audience sits across a spectrum of engagement, from early awareness to deep involvement. This will span all the way from those who know nothing about you and are not even aware they have a problem, through to those who are long-term customers and advocates of your business.

Below is an example of a buyer audience journey. Bear in mind that you may need different audience journeys for influencers or non-buyers.

Your content portfolio has to serve these different audience groups and provide opportunities for them to think differently and/or act differently at each stage. This will ultimately support in moving them along the audience journey from left to right.

Get them to think differently

This is all about changing how a segment of your audience perceives your brand. It may be their first interaction with you, so you might just want to make the audience aware of what you do and position yourselves as experts in your chosen topic.

Instead, perhaps you want to create an association between your brand and topic that primes the audience for a commercial conversation in the future. Or you may be looking to create a halo effect around your brand that creates an association outside the traditional commercial relationship. For example, by positioning your brand as having a strong focus on environmental responsibility in your operations.

Get them to act differently – the real CTA

The action you can expect from a content marketing or thought leadership campaign will depend on where each segment of your audience is in relation to their understanding of what you do.

Segments of your audience that are at an earlier stage of the journey are unlikely to sign up for calls to action like ‘Click here for a free call’ or ‘Click here to hear more about our products’. This is because they are not ready to have a conversation with you. However, they may want to sign up to a webinar to find out more about your areas of expertise. They might also sign up to a newsletter that keeps them informed about developments in their industry or role.

B2B CTA examples for each stage of the audience journey