COMS 3302-9-Putnam

Writing Persuasive Messages

Chapter 9

Plan your message first—what kind of situation are you facing? And don’t fall victim to the following three common mistakes: Be sure you know what your purpose is and that you are very clear in it with how you word your proposal. Next, you be very clear to your audience. Vague proposals or a failure to ask for what you want is a prescription of disaster. And third, the more complicated or involved your proposal is, the more patience you must show. Oftentimes persuasion takes a long time and many applications to achieve the desired effect. Don’t expect too much, too quickly.

Know your audience and what its needs are. Maslow (page 287) really was on to something with his analysis of our needs and how we try to satisfy them. Any request for action when you know the receiver will be unknowing, disinterested, or unwilling. Or the goal is to try to change the opinion of the receiver.

Select the right medium. Ideally face-to-face is the most effective but far from practical for much persuasion. You may need to use multiple channels to communicate your message.

Organizing the message. The success of any messages will hinge to a large degree on how well it is organized for its audience. Never underestimate how important this is!

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Strategies for Persuasive Business Messages

The Indirect method is normally used and is referred to as the AIDA Plan (page 292-94). And often follows something like what our book describes:

  1. Attention—something to grab the audience’s attention immediately. Must be concise, positive, arouse curiosity, or interest. To be boring here is often deadly. Lots of techniques are used; and often appeals to emotions are employed. Too much emotion can lead to a backlash; too little might not get the receiver to read on or continue to listen.
  1. Interest—making the receiver aware of the benefits of taking some action. If the receiver sees no value, then no actions will occur.
  1. Desire—provides proof of the benefits and values and this increases the likelihood of taking action. Build a case with evidence (facts and statistics), but not too much as to overwhelm the receiver. Often the communicator will combine the Interest and the Desire sections of their persuasive appeal. (Our book does not mention the need to create a sense of cognitive dissonance in the reader. For unless we sense that the status quo is unacceptable, we are seldom motivated to change our situation. This action needs to be accomplished prior to asking the receiver to take action.
  1. Action—This is the last and logical step. Unless the receiver acts, then all has failed. This needs to be direct and clear; easy for the receiver to do what you wish. The action step will allow the receiver to resolve whatever dissonance you were able to create in the previous steps. In short, this step solves the problem for the receiver. If you make the receiver struggle to take action, few people will do so.

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Balancing Emotional and Logical Appeals:

Logical Appeals(supporting material like statistics, facts, examples, etc.)

Any persuasive message lacking in evidence is doomed!

Tips for using:

  • Be specific—general claims carry less weight than specific pieces of evidence.
  • New, fresh, unusual, novel evidence is often better than older, and more known evidence. A new or fresh way of looking at a problem.
  • Sources must be credible. Key to cite your sources and they must come from people or organizations your audience will trust.
  • Use of analogies, inductive and deductive reasoning can be helpful in leading your audience on a logical path to your conclusion.

Emotional Appeals(pathos) The persuader must make the audience “feel” something or they are unlikely willing to accept our argument.

Common emotional appeals go to our fears, compassion, pride, anger, guilt (very common in charity who hope to get contributions), and reverence.

Mythos is an appeal to our sense of tradition, our heritage, our pride in the history of those came before us. Often used by sports coaches to instill pride and performance in athletes. Military commanders use this appeal; politicians often try it. And university alumni offices always use it to get your annual donations!! Mythos is perfectly ethical but subject to abuse when we instill pride at the expense of some other group of people (the scapegoats).

Emotional Fallacies—avoid these since they will ultimately undermine and destroy your argument if identified by the audience:

I.Hasty generalizations—can occur when using inductive reasoning; we just to a conclusion before the evidence warrants it.

II.Attacking the opponent instead of the issue. Risky, but these so-called “negative campaign ads” do tend to work. Can backfire if not careful.

III.Either-Or Argument—the false cause; assumes a complex issue can be viewed in simple yes-no, good-bad terms. For example, “either we increase tuition at UTA or the university will close its doors for good!” Odds are there are other solutions that can and should be considered.

IV.Faulty causes—easy to assume that something caused something else to occur when in reality there was just a relationship of some sort.

V.Faulty analogy—assumes that two items share much in common when in reality their differences are far greater than their similarities.

VI.Slippery Slope Fallacy—assumes that once something occurs it sets off an inevitable trend leading to disastrous results. Always plays on our fears and what lies at the bottom of the slope is horrible and must be avoided at all costs.

Dealing with Resistance:

  • There are not guarantees of success with any persuasive effort, but along with developing logical and emotional appeals, you must establish credibility, and acknowledge “other sides” to fend off resistance.
  • For us to believe communicators we must be convinced they are knowledgeable in their topic and ethical in behavior and honest with us.
  • Competence—expertise in topic; overall intelligence.
  • Character—can we believe you; trust you; care about us?
  • Ultimately, the audience will determine the speaker’s credibility. And that credibility varies from audience to audience; high to one and possibly low to another.
  • Acknowledging the “other side’s” position means exactly that—you refer to their concerns but then show the receiver why those concerns should not preclude them from acting on your argument. This is vital if your audience is well-educated, if they are apt to be exposed to another position later on, or if you think they may be somewhat against your proposal or lack interest initially. It is rare on business “not” to employ this “two-sided” argument in persuasive situations.

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(Optional: Depending on Time)

Fundraising Messages: (if we have time we will examine these messages in class. Otherwise, you can disregard this small section)

  • Important to focus on the concerns of the reader of the letter or message; not what you need. Make the readers feel like this is important to them.
  • Human-interest stories can often accomplish this.
  • Fundraising letters should be evaluated on the following criteria:

Does it capture your interest immediately?

Does it use simple language?

Does the reader have the chance to do something important?

Is it clear in what it needs from the reader?

Is it easy to comply with the request?

Overall, how close or effective is it with respect to the AIDA Plan?