Three Emotions That Can Improve Your Call To Action

I believe that a lot of storytellers get the call to action in their stories wrong (if there is a call to action at all). People make decisions on a feeling (most of the time) and when creating a call to action in a story, a person's feelings are often neglected. I've identified three key emotions that I've seen lead people to make decisions after consuming content.

Call To Action 101: Every good story should urge the viewer to do something at the end of it. This isn't rocket science but it's important to have a call to action in every film, advertisement or whatever else you're creating for your business or client. When identifying your call to action, I'd encourage you to think about the emotion that you want someone to experience when consuming your work.

I believe there are three emotions that people lead people to make a decision: Fear, Pride, and Curiosity. Let me explain.

We often focus more on what a person would receive (i.e. 15% off a new pair of shoes or half off appetizers) rather than what we want a person to "feel" in order for them to make a decision. Thinking about the way they feel can sculpt more creative, targeted messaging and likely more results.

FEAR: Fear is the most common emotion that is targeted when creating a call to action (subliminally or intentionally). Fear is often utilized when delivering a time-sensitive message that makes people feel some sort of urgency to do something (fear of missing out). Although this feels like low hanging fruit, I would reserve this emotion for your best, most impactful campaigns as targeting this emotion can quickly become white noise (how many times have you heard "Hurry in, this offer won't last long"?).

PRIDE: To be clear I'm not referring to pride in a negative way but rather a positive pride that can result from a great call to action. This emotion leaves people with a "feel good" outlook on your story and can lead to positive results. Brand awareness campaigns, specifically with non-profits, can significantly benefit from a call to action with this emotion in mind as people can feel a sense of pride that there is an organization in their community making an impact that they've never been exposed to before.

CURIOSITY: This one is challenging, but can yield incredible results if executed correctly. You often see this approach with a new, cutting-edge product or service like productivity apps or very unique, niche diets. Be careful when raising someone's curiosity as we often give away too much of the solution or conclusion that the product or service and reduce the amount of curiosity that can be generated. These aren't always cliff-hangers (like when Saved By The Bell did "To Be Continued" after a few of their episodes - the worst) but again, create a sense of urgency that makes people want to find out more. If you can accomplish this, make sure your shelves are stocked because it can create incredible results.

Now I'm sure you're thinking that there have to be more than three emotions that can encourage people to take action. Yes, there probably are more, however, I've found that most call to actions can be crafted to land into one of these three. If you get a moment to try one of these out on your next project, let me know how it goes. It can be incredibly effective and help you generate quality, intentional content that creates action.