On December 11, Facebook announced a big update to its business page service: call-to-action buttons on Facebook Business pages. The feature, currently in beta testing, initially rolls out over the coming weeks and worldwide next year.

CTAs to choose from:

  • Book Now
  • Contact UsFacebook Business CTA
  • Use App
  • Play Game
  • Shop Now
  • Sign Up
  • Watch Video

The seven CTAs allow properties to link to on-Facebook lead interfaces and off-Facebook to other digital locations, such as a website or landing page.

How do these new CTAs enhance your Facebook strategy? They enable properties to maintain a strong content stream to drive traffic to your page in order to boost click-throughs. Facebook looks to hedge against backlash over recent decreases in the number of unique people who saw content from a company page (also known as organic reach) by providing an obvious solution intended to drive ROI for strong content strategies. The idea being if you have interesting, relevant and well-timed content, users will visit your page and click through to learn more about your offering.

To effectively utilize Facebook’s new CTAs several strategic opportunities stand out:

  • Consider developing an action-specific landing page to drive users to, with easy user conversion.
  • Use your cover photo as another chance to convert and drive click-throughs.
  • Don’t over-promote or get too overt when asking people to click through to your page.
  • Keep sharing content to draw visibility to your new page feature.
  • Consider mobile – the new CTAs will show up on mobile and roughly three quarters of engagements in October came from mobile.

Facebook believes the new CTAs will help drive Pages’ business objectives. The introduction of the new feature reiterates the importance of strong content in your digital strategy, whether it be from your blog, website or through your social media presence. If you’re sharing relevant, intriguing content, users will click through to your Page and be exposed to your offering. With strong content and increased organic reach more users will access your page and potentially click through your new CTA button.