How Can You Ensure Your Content Drives Action (9 Steps)

Last Updated on July 31, 2023 by Jordan Alexo

Are you struggling to create content that truly resonates with your audience and drives them to take action?

Without people taking action, you won’t be able to achieve your content marketing goals. Whether that’s getting more email subscribers, sales, or social media followers, creating content that motivates people to take action is important.

In this guide, you’ll discover nine steps for creating content that makes your audience take action and crave more.

From tracking key metrics to optimizing content, these steps will help you drive more results and increase your ROI. Let’s dive in!

Key Takeaways

• Utilize headlines and subheadings to make content skimmable.
• Add interactive elements like quizzes, polls, simulations, and countdown timers to increase engagement.
• Use formatting to break up your content into smaller chunks and create a sense of urgency with limited-time offers.
• Include a strong CTA that tells readers what action to take.
• Measure your success by tracking key metrics, analyzing user behavior, and testing different versions.
• Leverage AI writer tools for headline suggestions, copywriting templates, summaries, and social media ads.
• Start with a clear goal and research your target audience for their needs & interests.
• Make your content visually appealing. You may use high-quality images, informative videos, infographics, and videos.

What Kind Of Action Can Your Content Drive?

Before we dig deeper, you need to understand what kind of action your content can drive.

See, content is everywhere around us!

You scroll through social media, read blog posts, and watch videos daily. But what makes some content more effective than others? The answer is simple – the ability to drive action.

So, what kind of action can your content drive?

1 – Increase Brand Awareness

Your content can help increase brand awareness by educating your audience about your brand, highlighting your unique selling points, and sharing your brand’s story.

This can lead to increased visibility and more people learning about your brand.

2 – Generate Leads

Content can help you generate leads by providing valuable information to your audience in exchange for their contact information.

Offering something of value, such as an e-book, white paper, or webinar, can encourage visitors to fill out lead capture forms and provide their email addresses.

3 – Boost Engagement

Engaging content can encourage your audience to interact with your brand – liking, commenting, or sharing your content on social media or other channels. This increases your chances of reaching a wider audience and attracting new followers.

4 – Drive Sales

Content can also drive sales by providing valuable information about your products or services, answering common questions, and highlighting the benefits of using your offerings.

Your content must communicate how your product or service can solve someone’s problem and make them want to purchase it.

5 – Promote Brand Loyalty

Effective content can also help promote brand loyalty by creating an emotional connection with your audience. This can be achieved by sharing stories, featuring customer success stories, and offering personalized experiences.

9 Steps To Ensure Your Content Drives Action

Let’s take a look at the nine steps to make your content drive action like there’s no tomorrow.

Step 1 – Start With a Clear Goal In Mind

When it comes to creating effective content, starting with a clear goal in mind is critical. A clear goal gives your content direction and purpose. It helps you create content.

You may have a clear idea about your goals by asking these questions:

• What is the purpose of this content?
• What action do I want my audience to take after reading or engaging with my content?
• How will this content support my business objectives?
• What metrics will I use to measure the success of my content?

Once you have a clear goal, creating content that makes people want to take action is easier.

Here are a few common contents and the corresponding goals:

• Lead Generation: subscription to a newsletter or filling out a form to access a free resource.
• Informational Articles: helps you grow your audience and establish yourself as a reputable source of information in your niche.
• Transactional Articles: Inform your audience about your products and services and push them to purchase or sign up for a free trial.
• Sales Page: designed to sell your products or services.

Also, once you see the type of content you want to create, it’s easier to measure its success using Google Analytics or other analytic tools.

You can use these tools to track your content’s click-through rates, conversions, or lead generation rates and see what’s working and what needs improvement.

Step 2 – Know Your Target Audience

To write content your audience loves, you must understand their needs and interests. Without knowing this, creating content that will drive action is nearly impossible.

For this reason, it’s essential to research and analyzes your target audience. You should know their demographics, interests, pain points, and challenges.

How Can You Get To Know Your Target Audience?

You may use information from tools like Google Analytics, Semrush, or Facebook audience insights to gain insight into your audience. Anyway, you want to define the following:

1 – Define Your Audience

Create a clear description of your ideal customer. For example, are they mainly male or female? What is their age range? What are their interests? What problems are they trying to solve? And demographics such as their location, education level, and occupation.

Knowing these details helps you craft content that speaks directly to your audience and resonates with them.

2 – Build a Buyer Persona

Also, you can create a buyer persona, like a fictional representation of your ideal customer. You do this by creating a story that includes their background, goals, challenges, and motivations.

This exercise is great because it gives you a clear idea of who you’re creating for. Instead of imagining you’re writing for a faceless group of people.

3 – Create a Content Strategy Around Your Audience

By understanding your audience, you can create content that pushes their buttons and address your pain points. Also, certain wording that resonates with them or specific topics that interest them.

For example, if you’re creating content for a fitness audience, you might provide tips on workouts, injury prevention, and nutrition to help them meet their goals.

Another part is this helps you see what social media channels your target audience often uses and what types of content perform well with them.

Step 3 – Make Your Content Visually Appealing

Nothing more boring than reading a wall of text. For this reason, it’s crucial to make your content visually appealing. It helps you retain your audience’s attention longer on your site. And Google also rewards websites with higher engagement and lower bounce rates.

In other to make your content visually appealing, consider the following tips:

• Use High-Quality Images: You can use free stock images, or with the help of AI tools, you can even create your designs without needing design experience.
• Informative Videos: Sometimes, people don’t want to read content and prefer watching videos. Therefore, create informative videos that can explain your written content.
• Incorporate Infographics: Infographics are a great way to display complex data and statistics in a more digestible format.
• Website Colors: Most people don’t consider this, but the color scheme of your website plays a big role. I prefer to stick with three to four colors that complement each other. Also, I avoid clashing colors or too many bright, distracting colors that overwhelm the reader.
• Easily Readable Typography: Choose a font that is easy to read. Often the common ones like Arial, Times New Roman, Georgia, or Verdana work best. Furthermore, stick to a 16px or higher font size to ensure everyone can read your content without straining their eyes.

Often people are more likely to engage with your content if it’s visually appealing. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

So don’t underestimate the power of incorporating beautiful images and having a well-designed layout to improve your content’s appeal.

Step 4 – Use Headlines And Subheadings

When writing content, make sure to use clear and concise headlines and subheadings. In a way, you want to make your content easily skimmable for people, so they can quickly find what they’re looking for.

Here are some tips for using headlines and subheadings effectively:

• Use Keywords: Include main keywords in your headlines and subheadings to improve search engine optimization (SEO).
• Make Them Descriptive: Your headlines and subheadings should accurately describe the following content.
• Catchy Phrasing: Use phrasing that captures readers’ attention and possibly triggers their emotions.
• Use a Hierarchy: Organize your content using a hierarchy with main headings and subheadings.
• Keep Your Headings Short: Long headlines and subheadings can be overwhelming and difficult to read.

So using headings and subheadings is an easy way to keep your content organized and readable. Also, it keeps everything looking professional, making your readers want to keep reading and eventually take action based on what they’ve learned.,

Step 5 – Incorporate Interactive Elements

This isn’t something that works for every piece of content and niche. But if possible, try to incorporate interactive elements into your content.

Also, interactive elements can help you break your long blocks of text and provide a richer experience for your readers.

Here are a few types of interactive elements that you may want to consider:

• Quizzes: This can be a fun and interactive way for people to engage with your content while testing their knowledge of the topic.
• Polls: Polls can help you gather feedback and opinions from your reader while also keeping them engaged.
• Surveys: Surveys can provide valuable insights and data on your reader’s preferences, needs, and pain points. You can use this information to improve your content, products, or services in the future.
• Games and Simulations: These can be excellent ways to retain your audience’s attention and increase engagement. In niches like education or training, simulations can help people more easily understand complex topics.

If you can keep your readers engaged with interactive elements, they’re more likely to remember your content and share it with others.

Also, it helps to establish a deeper connection with your audience and can lead to increased traffic, higher engagement rates, and better user experience.

However, not all interactive elements will fit your brand or audience well. For this reason, you should research and test different interactive elements and see which ones work best for your niche and audience.

Step 6 – Make Your Content Easy To Consume

I’ve already shared some advice on how to make your content easier to read by using headings, subheadings, and interactive elements.

However, you have a few more things you can do to make your content even easier to consume, such as:

• Break Up Long Paragraphs: People have short attention spans, so breaking up paragraphs into smaller chunks can make your text easier to read and digest.
• Use Bullet Points And Lists: I am constantly using bullet points and lists in my writing, as they make information easy to follow. Often people skim through your content, and bullet points and lists can help them quickly catch the main points you’re trying to make.
• Use Two to Three-Line Paragraphs: Shortening your paragraphs to two or three lines can make them much easier to read. Nothing worse than a long wall of text that looks intimidating to readers.
• Use Simple Language: Avoid using complicated vocabulary and jargon your readers may not understand. A good rule of thumb is to write as if you were explaining the topic to a friend without prior knowledge.
• Use Formatting To Your Advantage: Bold or italicize key phrases or words, use a different font size for headings, and make sure your text is aligned properly.

So, making your content easy to consume will help you keep your audience around to take whatever action you want them to take, whether it’s to subscribe to your newsletter, buy your products, or share your content with others.

Step 7 – Create A Sense Of Urgency

An effective marketing strategy is to create a sense of urgency. Most people, if you give them no time limit, will put off taking action on something.

For this reason, you should consider adding a sense of urgency to your content. Especially for promotions or limited-time offers, and sale pages, you can use tactics such as:

• Countdown Timers: To show your readers they only have a limited time to take advantage of your offer.
• Limited Stock Warnings: To let your readers know that your product or service is in high demand, and they must act fast before it’s gone.
• Use Action Words: Use action words like “Act Now,” “limited time offer,” or “Don’t miss out” to encourage your readers to take action.
• Highlight Benefits: Emphasize the benefits of taking action now rather than later to increase the sense of urgency.
• Offer Bonuses: When I reviewed products on YouTube, I often provided bonuses for those who purchased the product through my affiliate link. I noticed that this increased my conversion rate.
• Create Social Proof: People like to buy what others are buying, so showcase social proof, such as customers’ reviews or testimonials, to create FOMO (fear of missing out) and encourage readers to take action.

Creating a sense of urgency is one of the most powerful ways to motivate your audience to take action. Often content marketers feel it’s a bit shady to use these tactics.

However, most people are procrastinators by nature and need a little push to move forward.

Step 8 – Have a Strong Call To Action (CTA)

You should tell people exactly what you want them to do after reading your content. However, the CTA varies depending on your goals.

For instance, if you want to increase your email subscribers, you may offer a free e-book or webinar and prompt your reader to enter their email addresses to join.

Here are some tips for crafting a killer CTA:

• Make Your CTA Clear And Visible: Your CTA should be easy to find, visually appealing, and stand out from the rest of your content.
• Include Multiple CTA Options: You should include several CTA’s throughout your content. So if they don’t see the first one, they have another opportunity to take action.
• Use Enticing Language: Use words like “free download,” “limited time offer,” and “sign up now” to make your CTA more compelling.
• Be Specific: Your CTA needs to tell your readers exactly what action you want them to take and what they will get in return.
• Incentivize Your Offer: Provide an incentive for your audience to take action, such as discounts, exclusive access, or free bonuses.
• Split Test Your CTA: Test different versions of your CTA to see which one performs best.

Your CTA should be the cherry on top of your content. Once again, not all content will have the same CTA. Some content is meant to help you build your email list, while others may aim for direct sales.

For example, an informational post could have an opt-in box at the end inviting readers to join your email list for more content updates, while a product review post could include a button to “Buy Now” or “Download Today.”

However, each page should only focus on one main CTA to avoid overwhelming your readers.

Step 9 – Measure And Optimize Your Content

It’s essential to measure the performance of your content so that you can optimize it for maximum results. You want to know what’s working and what’s not, so you can make changes to improve your content marketing strategy.

In fact, I don’t think this only applies to sale pages and landing pages. But even in your blog posts, you should track metrics. See if your blog posts reply to search queries, the bounce rate, and how many social shares you’re getting.

For this reason, optimizing your content is an ongoing process that requires continuous monitoring and testing.

Here are some tips for measuring and optimizing your content:

• Track Key Metrics: Measure important data, such as page views, engagement rate, conversion rate, and bounce rate, to see what is working and what needs improvement.
• Analyze User Behavior: Use tools like Google Analytics to see how users interact with your content, including what channels they use to access it and how long they spend on each page.
• Keep Testing: Don’t stop testing and changing your content until you see the desired results.
• Measure ROI: You should also measure your content’s return on investment (ROI). This will help you determine which pieces of content generate the most revenue and which need adjustments.
• Heatmaps & Scroll Maps: Another more visual way to analyze user behavior is using heatmaps and scroll maps. This lets you see where your visitors click and how far they scroll down the page.

Always keeping working on optimizing your content will help you achieve better results and reach your goals faster. This process alone will drastically increase the number of people taking action on your content.

Bonus Step – Use AI Writer

A final pro tip is to use an AI writer tool to help you craft better copy. Not only do these tools help you write content faster. But also tools like Copy AI come with several features, such as:

• Headline And Subheading Suggestion: Artificial intelligence can generate different effective headlines and subheadings for you to choose from.
• PAS and AIDA Framework: Come with prebuilt templates such as Pain, Agitate, and Solve, which makes it easy to write persuasive copy without needing a professional copywriter.
• Content Summarizer: AI writers can summarize long pieces of content into shorter, more digestible formats. You can use these for key takeaways for your articles, helping your readers quickly and easily understand your content.
• Social Media Ads: AI writers can help you write better social media ads for Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, and more.

You should consider using an AI writer to help you out. Of course, it won’t provide a complete solution, but it’s a way to supplement and streamline your content creation process.

Last Thoughts

Now you have a complete roadmap for optimizing your content for better results.

As you can see, creating content that makes people want to take action takes time, effort, and constant optimization.

But if you follow the tips provided for measuring your ROI, knowing the purpose of your content, using proper formatting and CTA, utilizing user behavior analysis with heatmaps and scroll maps, and even using AI tools to assist with writing, you’re well on your way to creating content that connects with your audience.

Anyway, if you have any questions or additional tips to share, feel free to leave a comment below. Jordan Alexo will reply to you as soon as possible!