University of Phoenix



Persuasive messaging. The power of persuasion is a tool to be used with care and an eye for purposeful influence. The attention, interest, desire, and action model of persuasion should always be followed to successfully achieve your goal.

In this section, the finer points of positive and motivational messaging are covered, as well as the best ways to achieve goals in a persuasive way. Covering the planning, writing, and completing of a persuasive message, this section gives a solid and thorough insight into getting a point across. Also included are examples of successful persuasive messaging and the ways that companies currently use them.

Let’s see how Melt, a leading consulting company focusing in marketing, entertainment, lifestyle, and trends approaches these theories in practice:

With any brand messaging, whether it’s for an organization or a client or a packaged good or a service, there’s two very important things always: the clarity of your communication, and the consistency of your messaging.

Anytime that you are beginning a relationship with an individual, a customer, or a company that you’re selling to, you have to bear in mind, it’s like any other form of a personal or professional relationship. You’ve got to stand above the clutter, which is very difficult in our very transient, fast-moving, technology-filled society, but once you get above that clutter, you’ve got to really reinforce that messaging with trust.

I think Old Spice has done a very good job. They use humor to develop that relationship, but they, and they innovated their product, and then they leveraged that trust inherited with former consumers to bring them back into the franchise.

You want to communicate emotional messaging where it conjures up or stimulates an emotional affinity for that brand, and then, always functional messaging as well. So you continue, you want to constantly remind the consumer what are the emotional and functional benefits.

There’s always risk with emotion because it’s a very subjective exercise. As we say, beauty’s in the eyes of the beholder. How melt keeps our messaging both persuasive in the marketplace, but yet striking a nice balance with integrity and ethics is we always stay true to our core mission and our core brand principles. Always give a nod to the client, to the partnership, to the team, to the success so there’s a fine line between being proud of your accomplishments, and bragging about them.

The first step in crafting any persuasive message is really kind of understanding two things: what’s the essence of the message we’re trying to communicate, in other words, how are we going to develop that understanding of that message, and does it make sense to us; and then, craft it in a language that’s relevant to the audience of who we’re trying to communicate that with.

I think social media’s probably the greatest thing that’s ever happened to communication. I think that it is certainly leveled the playing field and allowed a lot of people—small businesses, individuals promoting their music or their creative expression or their new idea—has really empowered a worldwide marketplace. We’re seeing a growth demographically of people who are adapting very social media, and we’re also seeing an acceptability of how you get that message out there.

Consumers now are not intimidated by any messages in the marketplace, and they typically have a very narrow tolerance for BS in the marketplace and a very narrow window of attention and a very narrow attention span. So we feel like always a direct get to the point message is a lot more effective than sort of the footsies under the table, shall we say.

Repetition is critically important in any messaging process. As a matter of fact, I would argue that repetition and frequency is probably as much or more important than reaching a consumer. So, in other words, I would rather talk to you in a certain demographic four times than I would four people one time, because I’m probably going to convince you after the third or fourth time to take a look at my product.

A call to action in any product introduction or product promotion in the marketplace is very vital to the success of a product launch. You should have an opening argument. You should make your argument, and certainly always have a closing argument that reinforces the first two. So, absolutely always have a call to action, always invite that consumer in, always ask them to participate and always encourage their feedback. They’ll tell you every time.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download