Any good community manager knows the action is in the newsfeed on Facebook. People like your page once and then interact with your content via the newsfeed page. Facebook's redesign of the page itself over the years has placed less and less importance on page design, outside of the cover photo, which when changed, feeds into the newsfeed. That's why I found it odd that Facebook rolled out the "Call to Action" button, a button which prompts fans to "Shop," "Contact," "Book," etc, and can only be accessed by visiting a business' page.Now you can make the argument that if someone needs to reach out to you they'll visit your page and behave in a more proactive manner, but those fans are few and far between. At least that's what my gut told me. I decided to test this theory by activating several "Call to Action" buttons on client pages and here are the results.
Out of the 10 pages I activated, only 1 click on a "Contact Us" button has occurred in the last two weeks and I'm not convinced that wasn't from me testing. These are active pages which are supported weekly with advertising and are gaining new fans daily. On the other hand by including a website link in a promoted post I received several clicks to "Shop" on my client's website. Not surprising as the content appeared in the newsfeed, not just the page.
The "Call to Action" button is free to install, so there's no reason not to do it, but don't rely on it to do the heavy lifting. If you really want to drive action you need to be where the action is and that's in the newsfeed. Include links to your site and promote your posts to a targeted audience to see results.