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Motivating with
persuasive messages:
•The business meaning of persuasion is the influencing an
audience by information them
aiding their understanding – the audience is free to chose.
•Ethical business people inform customers of the benefits of
a product or an action so that
customers can recognize how well that product or action will
fill a need they truly have.
•Persuasive messages aim to influence audiences who are
inclined to resist, so they
depend heavily on strategic planning.
•Before you begin to write a persuasive message, ask
yourself what you’re writing about,
who you’re writing to, and what you want to happen as a
result.
•When writing persuasive messages, four things to keep in
mind about your audience are:
–Needs and appeals
–Emotion and logic
–Credibility
–Semantics
Needs and Appeals:
•Not everyone is interested in economy, for instance, or
fair play.
•Some people’s innermost needs make appeals to status and
greed much more effective.
•To accommodate these individual differences, analyze the
members of your audience and
then construct a message that appeals to their needs.
Emotion and Logic:
•Although emotional issues can be a pitfall for persuasive
messages, you can actually call
on human emotion, as long as your emotional appeal is
subtle.
•You can make use of the emotion surrounding certain words,
for instance, freedom brings
forth strong feelings, as do words such as success,
prestige, credit record, etc.
Credibility:
• ways of gaining credibility are:
– Being
enthusiastic: Your excitement
about the subject of your message can infect your
audience.
– Being
sincere. Your honest,
genuineness, good faith, and truthfulness helps you focus on
your audience’s needs.
– Being an
expert. Your knowledge of your
message’s subject area (or even of some other
area) helps you give your audience the quality information
necessary to make a decision.
– Having
good intentions. Your willingness
to keep your audience’s best interest at heart
helps you create persuasive messages that are ethical.
– Being
trustworthy. Your honesty and
dependability help you earn your audience’s respect.
– Establishing
common ground. Your beliefs,
attitudes, and background experiences that are
like those of your audience help them identify with you.
Semantics:
•The words you choose to state your message say much more
than their dictionary
definitions.
•For instance,
useful, beneficial,
and
advantageous
may be considered synonyms,
yet these three words are not interchangeable.
Organizing persuasive messages:
•Persuasion requires the indirect approach.
•One specialized version is the AIDA plan, which has four
phases
–Attention
–Interest
–Desire
–Action
Writing Persuasive Request for Action:
•In an organization, persuasive techniques are often
required to get someone to
change policies or procedures, to spend money on new
equipment and service to
promote a person or to protect turf.
•The attention-getting device at the beginning of a
persuasive request for action usually
shows the reader that you know something about his or her
concerns and that you have
some reason for making such a request.
•In this type of persuasive message, more than in most
others, flattering comment about the
reader is acceptable, especially if it is sincere.
Writing Sales Letters:
•Making a false statement in a sales letter is fraud if the
recipient can prove
–That your intent was to deceive
–That you made the statement regarding a fact rather than an
opinion or a speculation
–That the recipient was justified in relying on the
statement
–That the recipient was damaged by it
•Using a person’s name, photograph, or other identity in a
sales letter without permission
constitutes invasion of privacy – with some exceptions.
•Using a photo of the members of a local softball team in a
chamber of commerce mailer
may be perfectly legal if team members are public figures in
the community.
Planning Sales Letters:
•The three steps involved in planning a sales letter are
similar to those involved in planning
any other persuasive message
–Determine the main idea (in sales letters, it revolves
around a selling point and related
benefits)
–Define the audience
–Choose the approach and format
Determining Selling
Points and Benefits:
•Selling points are the most attractive features of a
product; consumer benefits
are the particular advantages that buyers will realize from
those features.
Defining the Audience:
•Marketers seek to define consumer in terms of
–Demographics: age, gender, occupation, income, and
education
–Psychographics: personality, attitudes, and lifestyle
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