1. Writing Persuasive Messages
Learning objectives
After studying this chapter, you will be able to do the following:
Apply the three-step writing process to persuasive messages
Identify seven ways to establish credibility in persuasive messages
Describe the AIDA model for persuasive messages
Distinguish between emotional and logical appeals and discuss how to balance them
Explain why it is important to identify potential objections before you start writing persuasive messages
Discuss an effective approach to identifying selling points and audience benefits
Identify steps you can take to avoid ethical lapses in marketing and sales messages
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2. Three-Step Writing Process
Planning
Writing
Completing
Analyze Situation
Gather Information
Select Medium
Get Organized
Revise
Produce
Proofread
Distribute
Adapt to
the Audience
Compose
the Message
With a solid plan in place, you’re ready to choose the words and craft the sentences and paragraphs that will carry your ideas to their intended audiences.
Planning business messages. To plan any message, first analyze the situation by defining your purpose and developing a profile of your audience. With that in mind, you can gather information that will meet your audience’s needs. Next, select the right medium (oral, written, or electronic) to deliver your message. With those three factors in place, you’re ready to organize the information by defining your main idea, limiting your scope, selecting an approach, and outlining your content. Planning messages is the focus of Chapter 4.
Writing business messages. Once you’ve planned your message, adapt to your audience with sensitivity, relationship skills, and style. Then you’re ready to compose your message by choosing strong words, creating effective sentences, and developing coherent paragraphs. Writing business messages is discussed in Chapter 5.
Completing business messages. After writing your first draft, revise your message to make sure it is clear, concise, and correct. Next produce your message, giving it an attractive, professional appearance. Proofread the final product for typos, spelling errors, and other mechanical problems. Finally, distribute your message using the best combination of personal and technological tools. Completing business messages is discussed in Chapter 6.
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Planning the Message
Analyze the Situation
Gather the Information
Select the Medium
Organize the Information
In today’s information-saturated business environment, having a great idea or a great product is no longer enough. Every day, untold numbers of good ideas go unnoticed and good products go unsold simply because the messages meant to promote them aren’t compelling enough to rise above the competitive noise. Even if audiences agree that your idea or product is attractive, they usually have other options to consider as well, so you will need to convince them that your choice is the best of all the attractive alternatives. Creating successful persuasive messages in these challenging situations demands careful attention to all four tasks in the planning step, starting with an insightful analysis of your purpose and your audience.
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4. Business Communication Today, 9e
Analyze the Situation
Clarify Your Purpose
Audience
Members
Decision
Makers
Express Your Purpose
Points of
Resistance
Alternative
Positions
Your purpose might seem obvious—to persuade people to visit your website or buy your snowboards—but persuasive messages can suffer from three common mistakes related to purpose. The first mistake is failing to clarify your purpose before you continue with planning. The second mistake is failing to clearly express your purpose to your audience. You may feel uncomfortable with the idea of asking others to give you time, money, or other considerations, but if you don't ask, you're not likely to get a positive response. The third mistake if failing to realize that the decision you want someone to make is too complicated or risky to make all in one leap.
Build Your Case
Desired
Actions
Corporate
Culture
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5. Business Communication Today, 9e
Analyze the Audience
Demographics
Psychographics
Gender
Personality
Income
Attitudes
Consider both the positives and the negatives—both the wants, needs, and motivations of your audience (the reasons they might respond favorably to your message) as well as their concerns and objections (the reasons they might not respond favorably). With these two insights as guides, you can then work to find common ground with your audience, while emphasizing positive points and minimizing negative ones.
The best persuasive messages are closely related to your audience’s desires and interests. To assess various individual needs, you can refer to specific information such as demographics (the age, gender, occupation, income, education, and other quantifiable characteristics of the people you're trying to persuade) and psychographics (the personality, attitudes, lifestyle, and other psychological characteristics of an individual).
Both types of information are strongly influenced by culture. When analyzing your audience, take into account their cultural expectations and practices so that you don't undermine your persuasive message by using an inappropriate appeal or by organizing your message in a way that seems unfamiliar or uncomfortable to your audience.
Education
Lifestyle
Other Factors
Other Factors
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6. Business Communication Today, 9e
Preparing the Message
Gathering
Information
Selecting
the Medium
Logical
Emotional
Internal Audience
External Audience
Once your situation analysis is complete, gather the information necessary to close the gap between what your audience knows, believes, or feels right now and what you want them to know, believe, or feel as a result of receiving your message. Most persuasive messages are a combination of logical and emotional factors, but the ratio varies wildly from message to message.
Persuasive messages can be found in virtually every communication medium ever devised. For persuasive messages intended for internal audiences, your choice of medium will closely follow the guidelines presented in Chapter 4. For marketing and sales messages, however, the choices are far more numerous. To complicate matters further, various members of your audience might prefer different media for the same message. If you can’t be sure of reaching most or all of your audience with a single medium, you will need to use two or more.
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7. Organizing the Message
Direct Approach
(Deductive)
Indirect Approach
(Inductive)
Define the Main Idea
Limit the Scope
Group Major Points
As with routine and bad-news messages, the best organizational approach is based on your audience’s likely reaction to your message. However, because the nature of persuasion is to convince your audience or to change their attitudes, beliefs, or actions, most persuasive messages use the indirect approach. That means you’ll want to explain your reasons and build interest before revealing your purpose. Nevertheless, many situations do call for the direct approach.
If audience members are objective, or if you know they prefer the “bottom line” first (perhaps because it saves them time), the direct approach might be the better choice. You’ll also want to use the direct approach when your corporate culture encourages directness. In addition, when a message is long or complex, your readers may become impatient if the main idea is buried seven pages in, so you may want to choose the direct approach for these messages as well.
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8. Business Communication Today, 9e
Writing the Message
Positive Polite Language
Cultural Differences
Organizational Cultures
Speaker Credibility
The generally uninvited and occasionally even unwelcome nature of persuasive messages means the “you” attitude is more critical than ever. Most people won’t even pay attention to your message, much less respond to it, if it isn’t about them. You can encourage a more welcome reception by (1) using positive and polite language, (2) understanding and respecting cultural differences, (3) being sensitive to organizational cultures, and (4) taking steps to establish your credibility.
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9. Completing the Message
Evaluate
the Content
Revise for Clarity
and Conciseness
Evaluate Design
and Delivery
Proofread
the Message
The length and complexity of persuasive messages make applying Step 3 even more crucial to your success. When you evaluate your content, try to judge your argument objectively and seriously appraise your credibility. When revising for clarity and conciseness, carefully match the purpose and organization to audience needs.
Your design elements must complement (not detract from) your argument. In addition, make sure your delivery methods fit your audience’s expectations as well as your purpose. Finally, meticulous proofreading will identify any mechanical or spelling errors that would weaken your persuasive message.
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10. Developing Persuasive Messages
Structuring Your Message
Balancing Emotion and Logic
Reinforcing Your Position
Your success as a businessperson is closely tied to your ability to convince others to accept or act on your recommendations. Therefore, , being able to persuade others in a written letter or memo is vital in today’s competitive workplace.
The goal of your persuasive business message is to convince your reader that your request or idea is reasonable and that it will benefit your reader in some way. Within the context of the three-step process, effective persuasion involves four essential strategies:
Structuring your message
Balancing emotional and logical appeals
Reinforcing your position
Anticipating objections
These strategies will help you craft strong persuasive messages, no matter what the situation. The amount of detail you pursue in each of these strategies varies according to the complexity of your idea or request. The next few slides will examine each of these four strategies.
Dealing With Resistance
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Interest
Attention
Desire
Action
AIDA Model
Most persuasive messages follow the AIDA plan: an organizational plan that goes beyond the indirect approach used for negative messages. The opening does more than serve as a buffer; it grabs your audience’s attention. The explanation section does more than present reasons, and it’s expanded to two sections. The first incites your audience’s interest, and the second changes your audience’s attitude. Finally, your close does more than end on a positive note with a statement of what action is needed; it emphasizes reader benefits and motivates readers to take specific action.
Attention. Make your audience want to hear about your problem or idea. Write a brief and engaging opening sentence, with no extravagant claims or irrelevant points. Find some common ground on which to build your case.
Interest. Explain the relevance of your message to your audience. Continuing the theme you started with, paint a more detailed picture with words. Get your audience thinking.
Desire. Make audience members want to change by explaining how the change will benefit them. Reduce resistance by thinking up and answering in advance any questions the audience might have. If your idea is complex, explain how you would implement it. Back up your claims.
Action. Suggest the action you want readers to take. Make it more than a statement such as “Please send me a refund.” Remind readers of the benefits of taking action, and make taking action easy.
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12. Balance Logic and Emotions
The Message
Logic
Promote Action
Understand Expectations
Overcome Resistance
Sell Your Point of View
Feelings
Sympathies
Needs
Analogy
Induction
Deduction
Most persuasive messages include both emotional and logical appeals. Finding the right balance between the two types of appeals depends on four factors: (1) the actions you wish to motivate, (2) your reader’s expectations, (3) the degree of resistance you must overcome, and (4) how far you feel empowered to go in selling your point of view.
An emotional appeal calls on human feelings, basing the argument on audience needs or sympathies. However, emotional appeals aren’t necessarily effective alone. Emotion works with logic in a unique way: People need to find rational support for an attitude they've already embraced emotionally.
A logical appeal calls on human reason. In any argument you might use to persuade an audience, you make a claim and then support your claim with reasons or evidence. When appealing to your audience's logic, you might use three types of reasoning:
With analogy, you reason from specific evidence to specific evidence.
With induction, you reason from specific evidence to a general conclusion.
With deduction, you might reason from a generalization to a specific conclusion.
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13. Examples of Faulty Logic
Simplifying
Issues
Forced Cause
and Effect
Flawed
Analogies
Illogical
Support
Hasty
Generalizations
Circular
Reasoning
Attacking the
Opponent
Every method of reasoning is vulnerable to misuse, both intentional and unintentional, so verify each of your rational arguments before you distribute your message. To avoid faulty logic, practice the following guidelines:
Avoid hasty generalizations. Make sure you have plenty of evidence before drawing conclusions.
Avoid circular reasoning. Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy in which you try to support your claim by restating it in different words. The statement “We know temporary workers cannot handle this task because temps are unqualified for it” doesn’t prove anything because the claim and the supporting evidence are essentially identical.
Avoid attacking an opponent. Attack the argument your opponent is making, not your opponent’s character.
Avoid oversimplifying a complex issue. For instance, don’t reduce a complex situation to a simple “either/or” statement if the situation isn’t that simple or clear-cut.
Avoid mistaken assumptions of cause and effect. If you can’t isolate the impact of a specific factor, you can’t assume it’s the cause of whatever effect you’re discussing. The complexity of many business situations makes cause and effect a particular challenge. You lowered prices and sales went up. Were lower prices the cause? Maybe, but the sales increase might’ve been caused by a competitor with delivery problems, a better advertising campaign, or any of a host of other factors.
Avoid faulty analogies. Be sure that the two objects or situations being compared are similar enough for the analogy to hold. Even if A resembles B in one respect, it may not hold true in other important respects.
Avoid illogical support. Make sure the connection between your claim and your support is truly logical and not based on a leap of faith, a missing premise, or irrelevant evidence.
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14. Reinforce Your Position
Figures of Speech
Audience Benefits
Right Timing
Powerful Words
After you've worked out the basic elements of your argument, step back and look for ways to bolster the strength of your position. Can you find more powerful words to convey your message? As with any powerful tool, though, use vivid language and abstractions carefully and honestly.
In addition to individual word choices, consider using metaphors and other figures of speech. If you want to describe a quality-control system as being designed to catch every possible product flaw, you might call it a spider web to imply that it catches everything that comes its way. Similarly, anecdotes and stories can help your audience grasp the meaning and importance of your arguments.
Beyond the specific wording of your message, look for other forces and factors that can reinforce your position. When you're asking for something, your audience will find it easier to grant your request if they stand to benefit from it as well. For instance, if you're asking for more money to increase your staff, you might offer to lend those new employees to other managers during peak workloads in other departments. The timing of your message can also help. Virtually all organizations operate in cycles of some sort—incoming payments from major customers, outgoing tax payments, seasonal demand for products, and so on. Study these patterns to see whether they might work for or against you.
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15. Anticipate Objections
Uncover Objections
Involve the Audience
Promote Compromise
Expect Resistance
Even the most powerful persuasive messages can expect to encounter some initial resistance. The best way to deal with audience resistance is to anticipate as many objections as you can and address them in your initial message before your audience can even bring them up. If you wait until people raise the concern after reading your message, chances are they already will have gravitated toward a firm “no” before you have a chance to address their concerns. By addressing such issues right away, you also demonstrate a broad appreciation of the issue and imply confidence in your message.
To uncover audience objections, try some “What if?” scenarios. Poke holes in your own theories and ideas before your audience does. Then find solutions to the problems you’ve uncovered.
Also, recognize that people are more likely to support what they help create, so ask your audience for their thoughts on the subject before you put your argument together. If appropriate, let your audience recommend some solutions.
Finally, keep in mind that compromise might be your best path to success. Rather than automatically countering audience objections or discounting alternative ideas, listen carefully, then engage your audience in discussion.
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Persuasive
Messages
Requests
for Action
Presentation
of Ideas
Claims and
Adjustments
Throughout your career, you’ll have numerous opportunities to write persuasive messages within your organization. Similarly, you may send a variety of persuasive messages to people outside the organization. In addition, many of the routine requests you studied in Chapter 7 can become persuasive messages if you want a non-routine result or believe that you haven’t received fair treatment. Most of these messages can be divided into persuasive requests for action, persuasive presentation of ideas, and persuasive claims and requests for adjustment.
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17. Business Communication Today, 9e
Requests for Action
Action
Written
Request
Gain
Attention
Use Facts,
Figures and Benefits
Make a
Specific Request
Whether you’re requesting a favor or a budget increase, remember to use the AIDA plan to frame your message. Begin with an attention-getting device. Show readers that you know something about their concerns and that you have some reason for making such a request.
Use the interest and desire sections of your message to cover what you know about the situation you're requesting action on: the facts and figures, the benefits of helping, and any history or experience that will enhance your appeal. Your goals are (1) to gain credibility for you and your request and (2) to make your readers believe that helping you will indeed help solve a significant problem.
Once you've demonstrated that your message is relevant to your reader, you can close with a request for some specific action.
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18. Business Communication Today, 9e
Presentation of Ideas
Message Focus
Support
Decisions
Expedite
Actions
Encourage
New Attitudes
Reexamine
Opinions
Most internal persuasive messages focus on getting the audience to make a specific decision or take some specific action. However, you will encounter situations in which you simply want to change attitudes or beliefs about a particular topic, without asking the audience to decide or do anything—at least not yet. In complicated, multi-step persuasive efforts, the goal of your first message might be nothing more than convincing your audience to reexamine long-held opinions or admit the possibility of new ways of thinking.
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19. Claims and Adjustments
Claim or
Adjustment
Written
Request
State the Problem
Review the Facts
Motivate the Reader
Make Your Request
Most claim letters are routine messages and use the direct approach; however, some require persuasion. Fortunately, most people in business are open to settling your claim fairly and quickly.
The key ingredients of a good persuasive claim are a complete and specific review of the facts and a confident and positive tone.
Begin persuasive claims by stating the basic problem (or with a sincere compliment, rhetorical question, agreeable assertion, or brief review of what's been done about the problem). Include a statement that both you and your audience can agree with or that clarifies what you wish to convince your audience about. Be as specific as possible about what you want to happen.
Next, give your reader a good reason for granting your claim. Show how your audience is responsible for the problem, and appeal to your reader’s sense of fair play, goodwill, or moral responsibility. Explain how you feel about the problem, but don’t get carried away, don't complain too much, and don’t make threats. Make sure your request is calm and reasonable.
Finally, state your request specifically and confidently. Make sure your request proceeds logically from the problem and the facts you’ve explained. Be sure to specify a deadline for action (when necessary or desirable). And don’t forget to remind your audience of the main benefit of granting your claim.
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20. Marketing and Sales Messages
The Competition
Selling Points
and Benefits
The Audience
For promotional messages, begin assessing audience needs, interests, and emotional concerns—just as you would for any business message. Try to form a mental image of the typical buyer for the product you wish to sell. Ask yourself what audience members might want to know about this product. How can your product help them? Are they driven by bottom-line pricing, or is quality more important to them?
Marketing and sales messages nearly always compete with messages from other companies trying to reach the same audience. In crowded markets, promotional writers sometimes have to search for words and phrases that other companies aren't already using. They might also want to avoid themes, writing styles, or creative approaches that are too similar to competitive messages.
With some insight into audience needs and promotional messages from the competition, you're ready to decide which benefits and features of your product or service to highlight. Selling points are the most attractive features of an idea or product; benefits are the particular advantages that readers will realize from those features. Selling points focus on the product. Benefits focus on the user.
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21. Anticipating Objections
High Price
Inferior Quality
Compatibility
Perceived Risk
As with persuasive business messages, marketing and sales messages often encounter objections, and once again, the best way to handle them is to identify them up front and try to address as many as you can in the original message (or messages, as the case may be).
Objections can range from high price to low quality to a lack of compatibility with existing products. Perceived risk is another common objection. Consumers might worry that a car won't be safe enough for a family, that a jacket will make them look unattractive, or that a hair salon will botch a haircut. Business buyers might worry about disrupting operations or failing to realize the financial returns on a purchase.
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22. Applying the AIDA Model
Getting Attention
Building Interest
Increasing Desire
Motivating Action
Most marketing and sales messages are prepared according to the AIDA plan, or some variation of it. You begin with an attention-getting device, generate interest by describing some of the product or service’s unique features, increase desire by highlighting the benefits that are most appealing to your audience, and close by suggesting the action you want the audience to take.
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23. Business Communication Today, 9e
Getting Attention
News Items
Personal Appeals
Promise of Savings
Common Ground
Product Samples
Problem Solutions
Product Benefits
Inside Information
Evocative Images
The following techniques can help you open your sales letters with excitement:
Your product’s strongest benefit. "iPod. 10,000 songs in your pocket.“
A point of common ground with the audience. "An SUV adventurous enough to accommodate your spontaneity and the gear that comes with it."
A piece of genuine news. "In the past 60 days, mortgage rates have fallen to a 30-year low.”
A personal appeal to the reader's emotions and values. "The only thing worse than paying taxes is paying taxes when you don't have to.”
The promise of insider information. "You may be one of those people who dream of working and living in France and don't know how to go about simply doing it. This guide tells how—from the inside out—how others like yourself have managed to work within the French system."
The promise of savings. "Right now, you can get huge savings on a new camera phone."
A sample or demonstration of the product. "Here’s your free sample of the new Romalite packing sheet."
A solution to a problem. "Tired of cold air rushing through the cracks around your windows? Stay warm and save energy with AAA Weather-stripping.“
Strong, evocative images. These are common attention getters. With online messages, you have even more options, including animation and music tracks.
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24. Business Communication Today, 9e
Building Interest
Support Promises
Highlight Key Points
Emphasize Benefits
Use the interest section of your message to build on the interest you created with your opening. This section should also offer support for whatever claims or promises you might've made in the opening.
Highlight your product’s key selling point. Ask what the competition has to offer, what distinguishes your product, and what most concerns potential buyers. Build your audience’s interest by highlighting your product’s key selling point, and emphasize it through typography, document design, or high-impact writing.
Highlighting the key selling point will help you to define the benefits to potential buyers.
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25. Business Communication Today, 9e
Increasing Desire
Audience Focus
Dynamic Language
Support for Claims
To build desire for the product, continue to expand and explain what it offers, how it works, how customers can use it, and so on. Think carefully about the sequence of support points, and use plenty of subheadings and other devices to help people find the information they need quickly. Take advantage of whatever medium you are using to continue to offer additional information that will increase audience desire for the product and help you prepare for the action stage.
Throughout the body of your message, remember to keep the focus on the audience, not on your company or your product. When you talk about product features, remember to stress the benefits and talk in terms that make sense to users.
To keep readers interested, use colorful verbs and adjectives that convey a dynamic image. Be careful, however, not to overdo it.
To increase desire, as well as boost your credibility, provide support for your claims. You can’t assume your audience will believe what you say just because you’ve said it in writing. You’ll have to give them proof.
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26. Business Communication Today, 9e
Motivating Action
The Next Step
A Sense of Urgency
Professionalism
A Good Impression
After you have raised enough interest and built up the reader’s desire for your offering, you’re ready to ask your audience to take action. Whether you want people to pick up the phone to place an order or visit your website to download a free demo version of your software, try to persuade them to do it right away. Make the response action as simple and as risk-free as possible.
Take care to maintain the respectful, professional tone you’ve been using up to this point. Don’t resort to gimmicks and desperate-sounding pleas for the customer’s business. Make sure your final impression is compelling and positive.
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27. Maintain High Standards
Avoid Manipulation
Use “You” Attitude
Obey the Law
Privacy and Security
The word persuasion has negative connotations for some people, especially in a marketing or sales context. They associate persuasion with dishonest and unethical practices that lead unsuspecting audiences into accepting unworthy ideas or buying unneeded products. However, effective businesspeople view persuasion as a positive force, aligning their own interests with what is best for their audiences. They influence audience members by providing information and aiding understanding, which allows audiences the freedom to choose.
To maintain the highest standards of business ethics, make every attempt to persuade without manipulating. Choose words that won’t be misinterpreted, and be sure you don’t distort the truth. Adopt the “you” attitude by showing honest concern for your audience’s needs and interests. Your consideration of audience needs is more than ethical; it’s the proper use of persuasion. That consideration is likely to achieve the response you intend and to satisfy your audience’s needs.
As marketing and selling grow increasingly complex, so do the legal ramifications of marketing and sales messages. In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the authority to impose penalties (ranging from cease-and-desist orders to multimillion-dollar fines) against advertisers who violate federal standards for truthful advertising. Other federal agencies have authority over advertising in specific industries, such as transportation and financial services. Individual states have additional laws that apply.
Before you launch a marketing or sales campaign, make sure you’re up to date on the latest regulations affecting spam (or unsolicited bulk , as it’s officially known), customer privacy, and data security. New laws are likely to appear in all three areas in the next few years.
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