We’ve recently produced a series of thought leadership papers on ROI. To give the discussion meaningful context, we used the principle of AIDA. The timeless idea that all prospects move through a 4 stage process -- awareness, interest, desire, action.

It has been a great exercise to match a timeless concept with the new wave tools we have available to us. The results are very interesting, if you aren’t on our mailing list you can get PDFs if them by clicking here.

The development of these pieces has me pondering something. In any marketing communication effort – a complete program, an individual ad, a direct mailer, a website, an e-mail newsletter, and especially a sales presentation - we take someone through this process. In the beginning we do something to attract attention, in the middle we do and say things to persuade and at the end we want the audience to act.

So isn’t ROI all about getting people to act and measuring those actions? That said, here’s an observation – what we have traditionally referred to as calls to action seem to be going away or getting so subtle that they are whispers to action rather than calls. 

Where have all the calls to action gone? I look at trade ads that have no offers and no calls to action and in some cases no indication of how to contact the company. Are the marketers so big, famous and omnipresent – that they don’t need no stinkin’ call to action? I know the reader service number has just about died, but lots prospects will act by using an 800 number and of course the new favorite call to action is to send them to you web site. I believe RFI – results from investment – will improve if you tell the reader how to act and why it is worth it.

Once you have them on your site don’t forget to them plenty of opportunity to act. Since you don’t know exactly what is on their mind, on any given page you should give the web visitor plenty of options to take action. Actions that them move deeper into your site or actions that reveal their identity to you. And please don’t dead end them – eventually the back button will allow someone to back out of your site.

If you want better results from your communications investment think about your call to action. Don’t be timid about suggesting how you want the prospect to act or about giving them multiple ways to do so. You may be surprised by the results.