Hey! Glad to see you at training this week.

This first session is all about persuading your audience to take action! 

This is fundamental to persuasive writing since persuasive writing aims to … (you guessed it) persuade! 

While it might seem obvious, your goal when writing any kind of copy is to get people to act. 

Why?

Because getting more clients, selling more programs and changing more lives depends on it. 

In order to get people to invest in your services…

You must persuade them to take action! 

While this newsletter will help you become prolific in crafting messages that persuade your audience to take action…

First things first:

You must have an action for them to take! 

This fundamental rule will ensure that whenever you write a new message you are heading in the right direction.

Let’s break it down.

Before writing anything, you have to know what the purpose of the piece is. 

For example, if you’re posting a workout video on Instagram, then the purpose should be to persuade your viewers to actually DO the workout. 

From this purpose, the CTA (call to action) makes itself clear - do this workout. 

Now, you want to word it a little nicer … “give this a go”... “Let me know how many reps you got”...“try this for your next workout” … you get the idea 😉.

For social media, encouraging action can also increase your engagement.

Simple, easy-to-answer questions, are the perfect starting place for encouraging people to take action. 

Questions like “What’s your favorite exercise”... “Have you tried this?”...  “What’s your PB?” … can easily be answered in the comments and are a great CTA for general content. 

It also has the added benefit of ‘priming’ people, because once they are comfortable interacting with your social media posts, they will be much more likely to take action on your promotional material in the future (click links, fill out applications, purchase programs… you name it!).

We want to encourage action…

But one way to make sure people DON'T take action is by giving them too many options. People can easily become overwhelmed with choices and end up not doing anything! 

Imagine someone going to the gym for the very first time. They nervously walk in and are instantly bombarded with all the weights, benches, machines, cardio equipment, bars, balls and bells!  How would they know where to start?? They’d just turn around and walk right out. 

However, that wouldn’t happen if they had a friend who said  “Follow me, let's start by finding a bench”. 

You need to guide your reader and give them one simple option that’s easy to follow. 

While having multiple options for different needs is a good thing, when it comes to CTA’s, just do one at a time. It keeps everything very clear, concise and easy to do. 

This ties back to understanding the purpose of whatever you’re writing.

Let’s take an email for example. 

The purpose could be to get the reader to view a program offer by clicking a link in the email.

If I made multiple different CTA’s throughout the email saying “watch this video to learn more” then “click the link to purchase now” followed by “or take a look at my 1-1 coaching here” …. 

The reader isn’t likely to do anything!

While all these CTA’s could be valuable, I’m trying to pull the reader in too many different directions. I’ve lost all sense of my purpose for this email.

(This concept also applies to having one Big Idea for each piece of copy, but more on that in a later session.) 

To ensure your encouraging desired action…

Focus on your purpose and give the reader one simple, clear CTA. 

In the case of the email:

Purpose: Get the reader to click the link.

CTA: “Take a look at the program by clicking here.”

Of course, there are better ways to phrase your CTA’s (again another topic for a later session) but for now, the main thing to remember is to align your singular purpose to a singular CTA. 

Weekly Workout

This could be as simple as using a question in your next caption or refining an email to focus on one purpose and one CTA. 

Here’s an example: CTA for sales email.

Feel free to reach out with any questions. 

That’s a wrap for today’s session! Great job!

I look forward to seeing you at training again next week.

Until then,

Beau. 🫱🏻‍🫲🏼