Is the Static Call To Action a Thing of The Past?
Every marketer knows the importance of a good call to action (CTA). Without one, marketing efforts can be ineffective. Although the CTA likely won’t be a thing of the past in marketing, how it’s presented may be.
In this experiment, we will test the performance of slide-in CTAs against static CTAs. This will help us determine, “Is the static call to action a thing of the past?” We’re going to put this online marketing best practice to the test and then share the results with you.
THE HUBSPOT EXPERIMENT
HubSpot released a blog stating that slide-in CTAs performed better than static CTAs.
They ran a test over the course of a month. During the test they added slide-in CTAs to ten of HubSpot’s highest-trafficked blog posts. They discovered that slide-in CTAs generated an increase in click through rates and submissions. Their exact stats were:
- 192% increase clickthrough rate by using a slide-in call to action
- 27% more submissions by using a slide-in call to action
We hope to get similar results, which is why we’re going to put this online marketing best practice to the test!
THE HYPOTHESIS
Based on the HubSpot test, if we add in slide-in CTAs to our top performing blog posts then we will see an increase in clickthrough rates and submissions.
THE PLAN OF ATTACK
We are going to take our 7 most popular blog posts and add in slide-in CTAs. To ensure we accurately compare, we will ensure the slide-in and static CTAs have the same offer. We will give ourselves 1 week to plan, design, and develop the new slide-in CTAs. We will then run the experiment for 1 month.
CURRENT STATS
Here are our current stats on our 7 most popular blogs. We will come back to these numbers at the end of the experiment. This will help us see if and where improvements are.
| Blog | Views | Submissions | New Contacts |
| 1 | 946 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | 321 | 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 280 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | 148 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | 97 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | 85 | 0 | 0 |
| 7 | 87 | 0 | 0 |
Taking a look at these numbers, we can see that we need to work on improving our CTA conversions. This could include adjusting the design, copy or offer, but for this experiment we will put slide-in CTAs to the test!
THE FINAL VERDICT
Once our month long experiment is complete we will be posting the final results. Let us know in the comments section below if you think the slide-in CTAs will outperform (…we sure hope they do!)