Updated
A call to action in a media interview is a specific thing you ask the audience to do: ask yourself this one question, try this one thing, do this today. Use one in every answer rather than once at the end, and far more people act on what they just heard.
It already worked on you
You must watch this video. You must read this email. That is what a lot of people saw before they got here.
That was a call to action. It asked you to act, and you did.
Your interviews need the same thing, and almost nobody puts one in.
Why most interviews create nothing
A typical interview shares information and then stops. It was accurate, it was interesting, and nothing happened afterwards, because nobody in the audience was ever told what to do with any of it.
The fix is not a hard sell. It is one specific ask, stated plainly, inside your answer.
What a call to action sounds like
These are the forms that work in an interview, because they sound like part of an answer rather than an advertisement:
- Ask yourself this one question. You are getting listeners to stop and answer something for themselves, which is a genuine action even though it costs them nothing.
- Try this one thing. Small, specific, and doable before they have finished their coffee.
- Do this today. A deadline attached to a single step.
Notice none of those are go to my website. A call to action does not have to point at you, and it is usually stronger when it does not. Ask people to do the useful thing, and the ones who act find their way back to you anyway.
Every answer, not once at the end
Here is the part that changes the outcome. Use a call to action not just once in your interview, but in every answer.
When you use them in every answer, you have a much, much greater chance of people taking action.
There is a practical reason for this beyond enthusiasm. A closing ask is the easiest thing in the world to cut, and live segments end early all the time. Spread across your answers, the ask survives the edit and it reaches the person who only heard ninety seconds of you.
Prepare them, do not improvise them
In a training session, this becomes one of the three message categories in the grid. We write out many different calls to action so there is a choice available mid answer, instead of the same sentence three times or nothing at all.
That is the whole discipline. Decide in advance what you want people to do, write several ways to say it, and then actually say it. Read the message grid and the three part answer for where it lives in the rest of the system.
If you want your spokespeople carrying calls to action into their next interview, get a quick quote.