People have read your headline, they've worked all the way through your body. Finally comes the call to action. If you are selling a digital product or a physical product, this is where you invite them to click on the link and to make the purchase. If you want people to call you for a consultation, then this is where you tell them. Call me now, and let's discuss how to take this further. Some sort of action comes at the end of all of your content marketing.

Now, again, not not to harp on about what other marketers do, that's right or wrong. Some people will tell you that you want to, for example, send 10 emails before asking for a sale. And the reason they give for this is that you want to build the relationship first before asking for the sale. And one one metaphor I heard was sent you you go on a date with someone to a restaurant. And then you propose to them at the end of end of the first date. It's too soon in the relationship.

And my my thought when I heard this was like, hang on, you went to a restaurant, and you gave them money for food. But didn't you have to get to know the chef first and you have to get to know the maitre D first and you have to go 10 times before they will accept your money. Isn't it too soon in the relationship. Here's the thing. You are a business person. Even if you're an entrepreneur, or you're working for some large, like organization, even if you're working for a nonprofit, you are a business person.

That means you are professional. And one of the things you need to do is you need to sell. Sell people on ideas on actions on products. Whatever it is, this is what you do. If you walked into a restaurant and they wouldn't serve you, because they wanted to get to know you first, that would be grossly unprofessional. And you're not asking anyone to marry you here.

This is not a permanent relationship is not an exclusive relationship. You're asking someone to give you money in exchange for something that's going to be truly valuable to them. And if your product or service will help them, then it's a disservice to not sell it to them. So yes, there are people out there who will say don't have a call to action, just offer a bunch of useful valuable content and then ask for the sale later. I do not see any evidence or cannot see any logic as to why that would be the best way to go. Include with all of your content Call to Action.

Even if it's just as simple as you've written, you've written an article already. And you just have a one sentence at the bottom saying, and if you'd like more of this, or if you'd like to resolve x problem, then follow this link. Something as simple as that is really doing good things for your audience. Because if they're not ready to buy, because it's too soon in the relationship, that's fine. That is not a problem. In fact, that's good, because you are building their relationship with your content marketing.

But if they are ready to buy, then why would you prevent them from doing that? If they are ready to buy them, let them buy. You're doing yourself a favor, and more importantly, you're doing them a favor. So there are two things your call to action needs to do. The first thing is it needs to describe the benefit that they will have, once they take action. It could again, it could be something as simple as a single sentence saying, if you'd like relief from problem x, then check out this sales page or download the product from here.

Or maybe you spend a couple of paragraphs, really elaborating on the benefits, really painting the picture in their mind, really hooking them in. This is usually the better way to do things. Because people will read your content. And I'll enjoy it. And at some point, you want to seamlessly start talking about how your product, your service, whatever it is you're offering will benefit from that benefit them. And you could do this in one sentence.

Sure. Some people though, they would need a couple of paragraphs just to really just really create it like really crystal clear up here. So again, they cannot ignore the benefits. So the first step is that to really create the benefits clear in their mind. The second step is to give them a simple next bit of action. And I do mean simple.

Ideally, and you see this a lot in especially emails. It's as simple as click this link. Anyone can click that link. That's that's pretty easy. If you don't have a mouse, you can still click that link using your keyboard. Like that's, that's a really like that's, that's nothing that takes someone a 10th of a second.

No mental processing required. It could be pick up the phone and call this number. Everyone knows how to pick up a phone and call a number. We've been doing it all our lives. It is really simple. It's really natural and it's really easy for us to do.

If your call to action is something more complicated, like go to the website, print out this form, fill in the form, mail it to this address, people are going to go. I was hooked on the benefits. But that seems like too much work, I've got other things to do. If you actually have to get people to do that, then you say, visit this webpage, and you have the link. And then on that page, just say, Now just download this form. And then once I download the form, it says in there, now just fill out this form.

Every step becomes a small step, then something easy. Because one thing you need to remember, people like buying things, but they don't like spending money. So they want your product or your service. They want to take action based on your content marketing. But there's also some sort of resistance in there. There's some sort of voice in the back of the head saying like, oh, but I don't want to don't spend money on that.

You don't want to give that voice and excuse. You want to make it as easy as possible, as natural as possible. So people don't even have to think about it. They go, I want these benefits. What's the next step? Okay, let's do that right now.

So if your call to action is inspiring, because it describes the benefits, and then goes to get those benefits, just do this one simple thing now. You'll find that your call to action really sizzles for people.