​Most marketing teams do not have a content problem. They have an action problem. They can fill a calendar, get it approved, and publish on schedule. What they cannot always do is point to what that content actually made someone do.
That gap was the subject of the latest Snack Break, Fungi Marketing’s monthly live webinar series: “How to Create Content That Actually Drives Action.” Hosted by Jordan Lacenski, Director of Marketing at Fungi, the session laid out a simple four-part framework for closing that gap, plus one action item per move you can try before your next budget conversation.
If you missed it live, the replay is below. If you want the short version first, start with the key takeaways.
Key Takeaways
- Content that drives action follows four moves, in order: Know the Person, Bring Proof, Match & Distribute, and Keep the Promise. Skipping one move undermines the other three.
- A job title is not a buying stage. Knowing the person means understanding the specific moment and motivation behind a real buying decision, not just a persona on file.
- “Impressions” and “pipeline” are different languages. Proving content works means reporting movement, not activity, and building in a measurement plan before a piece ever goes live.
- One asset cannot do four jobs. Format, channel, and audience have to be chosen together, or the same message gets pasted everywhere and converts nowhere.
- Consistency compounds. A one-off does not. Content that keeps a promise, publishing on a real, repeatable rhythm, builds trust that a single high-performing post cannot.
- A real B2B distribution engine can move revenue fast. One Fungi client, Bellevue Avenue, doubled revenue in 30 days and tripled it in 60 after rebuilding their distribution approach around these four moves.
The Four Moves to Action, Explained
Here is what the session covered, move by move.
Move 1: Know the Person
Knowing the person means understanding who is actually buying right now, not who is sitting on a persona slide from two years ago.
Jordan illustrated this with a real Fungi client example: a mushroom drink company that most agencies would have treated as a pure consumer brand, running Instagram ads and influencer content. But their actual growth bottleneck was on the B2B side. They needed to win over regional distributors and retail buyers, a completely different audience with a completely different set of fears. A fact that means nothing to a thirsty consumer (this company is a seventh-generation family business) turns out to be a powerful de-risking signal to a distributor who is nervous about stocking a brand that might not be around in a year. Same fact, different reader, different job for that fact to do.
Try this: Pick one piece of content you have already published and name the exact buying moment it was written for. Not the persona: the moment. Then talk to five real people who match that moment, plus a couple of sales calls, and listen for the language they actually use, not the language your buyer persona document uses.
Move 2: Bring Proof
Move 2 addresses one of the most common tensions between marketing and the rest of the business. It plays out almost exactly the same way everywhere: a marketer reports that a blog is live, a LinkedIn post is up, and an email went out. Leadership asks what it did for pipeline. The honest answer, that marketing does not always work in a straight, immediate line, is true, but it is also not good enough on its own anymore.
Everyone can generate a perfectly decent LinkedIn post in ninety seconds now. Consistency alone does not prove anything. Bringing proof means two things: original data, a real point of view, or lived expertise baked into the content itself, something a generic prompt cannot fake, and reporting that focuses on movement instead of impressions.
Try this: Look at your own page or piece of content and ask what you actually want someone to do on it. Is that action clear right away? Is it easy to complete? Without a clear, completable action, there is no real number to report, no matter how good the content is.
Move 3: Match & Distribute
Move 3 is where a lot of content quietly dies. A team builds one strong asset and asks it to do four different jobs: the same post gets pasted into email, LinkedIn, and a sales deck, completely unchanged, and everyone is surprised when it converts nowhere.
Content type, channel, and audience have to be chosen together. A long-form article works for someone still researching the problem. A LinkedIn post reaches someone who is not ready to act yet. A case study serves someone actively comparing options. A short video reaches someone who wants depth, fast. Four different shapes for four different readers, on purpose, not “post everywhere and see what sticks.”
Try this: Ask whether your promise shows up in the first five seconds. If an ad promises one thing and the landing page tries to serve everyone at once, high click-through paired with low engagement means the ad did its job and the page lost the person it earned.
Move 4: Keep the Promise
Most content marketing resets to zero every month. A piece publishes, gets a short burst of attention, and the next month starts from scratch with nothing carried forward.
Content that compounds does the opposite. Every piece builds on the last one, on a rhythm people start to expect, show up for, and tell other people about. That rhythm is the entire premise of the Snack Break series itself: a recurring, dependable touchpoint, not a one-off push.
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Proof It Works: Bellevue Avenue
Frameworks are only useful if they hold up outside the slide deck. Fungi’s own client Bellevue Avenue put all four moves into practice as part of a rebuilt distribution engine, not just a bigger content calendar. Revenue doubled in 30 days. It tripled in 60. Right person, right format, every time, is the mechanism behind that number, not a single viral post.
A Quick Caveat on Measurement
One honest note from the session: not every result from good content shows up cleanly in a dashboard. Buyers increasingly research quietly, read without filling out a form, forward links internally, and return later through a branded search or a direct visit. That pattern, often called the dark funnel, has only gotten more pronounced as more buyers start their research inside AI chat tools instead of a traditional search bar. Perfect last-click attribution was never realistic. The fix is not to demand it. It is to choose better directional evidence, and to keep bringing proof anyway.
Get Your Free Scorecard
Move 2 is about proving your content is working before someone else asks you to. Fungi’s free weekly scorecard spreadsheet helps you do exactly that: track your marketing performance week over week, with a bonus ROI calculator built in, so you walk into your next budget conversation with a number instead of a guess.
No pitch required. It is built for teams who are not quite ready to talk strategy yet and just want a clear read on what their content is actually doing.
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What’s Next: Snack Break, Part 2
This session covered how to create content that gets attention and moves the right person. Part two picks up exactly where this one leaves off: what happens after someone raises their hand.
Join Jordan Lacenski and guest Ryan Bowles, Fractional CXO at Performance CXO, on Wednesday, September 23 at 11 AM ET for a session on closing the gap between sales and marketing with a shared scorecard that turns a marketing lead into a real, qualified sales opportunity.
FAQ: Content That Drives Action
What are the “Four Moves to Action” in Fungi Marketing’s content framework? The Four Moves to Action are Know the Person, Bring Proof, Match & Distribute, and Keep the Promise. Together they describe how to identify who is actually buying, prove that content is working, match the content format to the right channel and audience, and publish on a consistent rhythm so results compound over time.
Why does content perform well on impressions but fail to generate pipeline? This usually happens when content is measured by activity (impressions, likes, shares) instead of movement (clicks to a clear next step, replies, saved content, registrations). Fixing it starts with giving every piece of content one specific, completable action before it publishes, then reporting on whether people took that action.
What is the difference between publishing content and distributing content? Publishing content is posting it. Distributing content is deliberately choosing the format, channel, and audience for a specific piece so it reaches the right person in the right moment, rather than posting the same asset everywhere and hoping something sticks.
Why can’t marketing always prove content directly caused a sale? A meaningful share of B2B research happens quietly: buyers read content without filling out a form, forward links internally, and return later through branded search or a direct visit, a pattern often called the dark funnel. This has become more common as buyers research through AI tools as well as traditional search. The fix is using directional evidence (repeat visits, branded search lift, sales team feedback) rather than expecting exact last-click attribution.
When is Fungi Marketing’s next Snack Break webinar? The next Snack Break is Wednesday, September 23 at 11 AM ET, featuring Ryan Bowles, Fractional CXO at Performance CXO, on turning marketing leads into real sales pipeline with a shared scorecard.
The Takeaway
Publishing is output. Action is the outcome. If you only fix one thing this month, find your weakest link: right person, right message, right page. One broken link is often all it takes to lose a customer who was otherwise ready to act.
Watch the full replay above, download the free scorecard to start proving your own numbers, and save your seat for Part 2 in September to close the loop between marketing and sales.
Jordan Lacenski is Director of Marketing at Fungi Marketing and hosts Snack Break, Fungi’s monthly live series on marketing that actually matters.
