CTA’s for Broadcast Media


Often when we think of a CTA (Call-To-Action), we think of a button that you click on a digital ad. As an agency known for its work in video and audio media, we know having the right CTA will make or break your campaign. When deciphering the best route to take for a campaign, we like to qualify CTA’s as follows:

1. Is it memorable and easily accessible?

Many times using a landing page, like happyhourmediagroup.com/BestSaleEver in video or audio is unsuccessful because consumers migrate to the lowest barrier of entry. They’ll go to your homepage, happyhourmediagroup.com, creating a gap in attribution. If driving to a website, better to setup a promo code they can enter that will be tied back to the specific campaign you’re running.

2. Is it the right CTA for the medium you’re advertising on?

Tracking phone numbers can work well for TV, but are far too difficult to remember for radio/podcast. We’ve even noticed nuances between radio and podcast, where the podcast audience is responding better to texting CTA’s or websites with promo codes, and radio drives more through phone lines with short codes.

3. Do you have the infrastructure to support the CTA’s you’re using?

If you’re driving to a call center and have multiple media running in the same daypart or timeframe, can you handle the influx in calls, or are wait times too long? You may need to vary your CTA’s to avoid overburdening your operations.

4. What is the incentive?

If you’re going to make a potential customer go through an extra hoop of utilizing the CTA you’re asking them to use, what is their incentive? It doesn’t always have to be a discount, it could be something else valuable, like information you’re giving them.

5. Is it trackable?

If we can’t point to the success or failure of a specific campaign, then we have no way of tying it back to a ROAS for our client. At the end of the day, you want to know exactly what you get in terms of revenue from the dollars you spend.

Once you’ve identified the best CTA, and have the right offer to support it, monitor it! If you’ve been running a campaign for 2 weeks to a month, and the performance isn’t where you want it, try changing the CTA up. Different audiences respond differently. Are you advertising in a program where a host uses a specific CTA to interact with his audience, like a text line? If their audience is already primed to respond a certain way, then your campaign might be more successful if you follow suit.

Remember, a campaign is only as good as your ability to track it!