Do you want to drive more sales? What are the best persuasive techniques in advertising? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Advertising is an essential part of business, but it can take up a big part of your time and budget. That\u2019s why every business needs effective advertisements that are budget-friendly, appealing to customers<\/a>, and guarantee sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are the best persuasive techniques in advertising to grow your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n When you try to understand others and their desires in the advertising process, it encourages them to do the same toward you. And you can help them to understand why you\u2019re selling your product by communicating what your business is, how you, as a salesperson, feel, and what you think. Specifically, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People<\/em><\/a> by Stephen R. Covey argues that a key persuasive advertising technique is to use the Greek rhetorical philosophy of ethos, pathos, and logos, in that order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first persuasive appeal, ethos<\/em>, convinces your target audience that you\u2019re trustworthy and puts them in the mood to listen to you. In Thank You for Arguing<\/em><\/a>, Jay Heinrichs outlines one powerful element of a strong ethos <\/em>appeal: virtue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When your target audience believes that you share the same values as they do, they see you as someone <\/strong>virtuous<\/em><\/strong>, or trustworthy and aligned with their cause.<\/strong> Heinrichs explains that the key to appearing virtuous is meeting your audience\u2019s expectations<\/em>, or fitting in with them\u2014from your appearance and manner of speaking to your interests<\/a> and sense of humor. When your audience believes you\u2019re in sync with them, they find you easier to like, listen to, and trust. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Heinrichs suggests three areas in which to align with your target audience: values, experiences, and appearance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 1) Demonstrate shared values: <\/strong>Don\u2019t talk about your personal<\/em> values. Instead, speak to the values of your audience<\/em>\u2014even if you don\u2019t necessarily believe those values to be true or right. People who think you share their values will naturally trust you more, making it easier for you to persuade them of something they\u2019d normally be opposed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2) Demonstrate shared experiences: <\/strong>Pay attention to your audience\u2019s identity, then change the way you speak about your experiences to match. For example, you\u2019re arguing that your company is creating technology that would be helpful for teachers. Though you\u2019re not a teacher, you can explain how your volunteer experience with underfunded city schools convinced you to create an affordable product to make teachers\u2019 jobs easier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 3) Demonstrate shared appearance: <\/strong>Heinrichs suggests matching the way you look <\/em>and sound<\/em> to audience expectations\u2014in other words, dress like them and speak like them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The second persuasive appeal after ethos<\/em> is pathos<\/em>, or emotion. Heinrichs notes that our emotions are much<\/em> stronger than our rationale\u2014therefore, a pathos<\/em>-based persuasive technique in advertising is best for getting the audience to buy from you or become a loyal customer. Pathos<\/em><\/strong> helps you bridge the gap between your target audience <\/strong>agreeing<\/em><\/strong> to your choice and <\/strong>acting<\/em><\/strong> on it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Appeal to your audience\u2019s emotions by creating a strong bonding moment or focus the discussion of a rival company, making your audience turn against your rival. One of the most effective is appealing to tribalism, or group identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Heinrichs notes that the strongest form of tribalism is patriotism<\/em>, or loyalty to a country, school, town, or other entity. He explains that this feeling is largely due to your body\u2019s oxytocin (the bonding hormone) levels. Oxytocin naturally spikes slightly when you\u2019re in a group, helping you feel closer to other members. However, when your group is threatened in any way, your oxytocin levels go through the roof, triggering strong emotions such as defensiveness, jealousy, and competition\u2014all of which can lead to impulsive actions and decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Heinrichs notes an easy two-step process to manipulate an audience\u2019s oxytocin levels to harness the power of tribalism: <\/p>\n\n\n\n The last persuasive appeal is logos, which helps you use your audience\u2019s logic and beliefs to make your business look as advantageous as possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Logos bolsters arguments to achieve the goal of changing your audience\u2019s mind<\/em>. Heinrichs explains that <\/strong>logos<\/em><\/strong> helps you use your audience\u2019s logic and beliefs to make your desired choice look as advantageous as possible. <\/strong>This means presenting the argument most persuasive to your audience rather than the most persuasive to you<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Heinrichs explains that there are three steps to using logos <\/em>effectively: <\/p>\n\n\n\n The primary goal of a persuasive advertising technique is to increase profit, and that\u2019s accomplished with ads. Advertisements can be shared through newspapers, billboards, television, radio, or social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Smart advertising can be very <\/em>effective\u2014one copywriter found that a good ad sold almost 20 times as much as a bad one. (In contrast, bad advertising can be so ineffective it actually harms <\/em>sales\u2014for example, when Ford advertised in every second issue of Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em>, the people who had seen the ads bought fewer vehicles than those who hadn\u2019t.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ogilvy on Advertising<\/em><\/strong><\/a> by David Ogilvy says to increase profit, ads must promise the consumer a benefit<\/strong>, and ads that don\u2019t do this, regardless of how attractive or creative they are, will fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even if products sell well on their own, good advertising can increase profit. For example, Listerine sold perfectly well for 40 years. But when it was advertised as a cure for bad breath, sales exploded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are some steps for creating a good ad regardless of the medium:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Learn about the product.<\/strong> It\u2019ll be easier to make associations and come up with potential benefits when you have a solid knowledge base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Study your competitor\u2019s ads. <\/strong>When you come across effective ads, study and copy the techniques used. Particularly study direct-response ads (ads that encourage consumers to contact a company directly to make a purchase) because these tend to be tested extensively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Engage in consumer research.<\/strong> In particular, try to find out what product promise will most appeal to consumers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Position your product.<\/strong> To \u201cposition,\u201d determine what the product does and who the target audience is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Choose a brand image.<\/strong> \u201cImage\u201d is the personality of a product, which stems from its inherent qualities as well as marketing variables such as price, packaging, and advertising style. Typically, cultivating a high-quality image works well, especially for products that are used in public. If your advertising is tacky or cheap, it will make your product look tacky and cheap, and people don\u2019t want to be associated with these qualities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. Come up with big ideas.<\/strong> Big ideas will hook readers or viewers. They\u2019re very hard to come up with\u2014Ogilvy only had 20 throughout his entire career. Induce ideas by doing your research and then letting your mind unconsciously connect ideas as you go for a walk, drink, or take a bath. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to being hard to come up with, big ideas are also hard to recognize, but if you can answer yes to the following questions, you\u2019re on the right track:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. Spotlight the product and make it the star.<\/strong> If there\u2019s nothing different or unique about your product compared to your competitors (for example, you sell table salt), make your advertising itself unique, or be extra clear and convincing. (You don\u2019t have to convince people that your product is the best, you just have to convince them that it\u2019s good. If you do this and explain yourself better than everyone else, it doesn\u2019t matter if their product is better\u2014people who are uncertain or confused will buy yours.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. Avoid working in committees.<\/strong> Committees tend to overcomplicate things and require compromise, and as a result, the final ad tends to say nothing of importance. Committees also slow down creation\u2014it can take a committee up to half a year to come up with an agreed-upon campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n 9. Reuse your ads until they stop selling your product. <\/strong>You can usually repeat an ad at least four times without decreasing readership. This is because consumers aren\u2019t all looking for the same product at the same time\u2014the people who bought cars last year aren\u2019t the same people looking for a car this year. There\u2019s no point in reusing an ad if it\u2019s not persuasive enough anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While there is an advantage to being familiar with persuasive advertising techniques<\/a> in all mediums, social media is by far the most important technique for several reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These days, almost everyone has a mobile device and many people are on social media.<\/strong> There are millions of mobile subscriptions in the US and almost half of the time people spend on their phones is used for social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite social media\u2019s popularity, many marketers and businesses are reluctant to embrace new platforms.<\/strong> This is for a variety of reasons, including feeling they don\u2019t have time or thinking the new platform is silly. This means that any brands that do <\/em>embrace new platforms have a head start. Often, early adopters<\/a> are small businesses because they don\u2019t have the same PR and legal red tape that larger companies do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you work hard to create great content and show the community you care, you\u2019ll do well even if other companies have more resources. Being cared for by a business is so rare that it surprises people and leaves an impression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best way to use social media as a persuasive technique in advertising is to embrace two types of content: \u201cjabs\u201d and \u201chooks.\u201d Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook<\/em><\/a> by Gary Vaynerchuk goes into further detail about this unique concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In marketing, a metaphorical jab is content that builds the relationship between you and your customer.<\/strong> Jabs should be intriguing, engaging, and\/or create some sort of emotional response, such as making people laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A metaphorical right hook is marketing content that includes a call to action<\/a> and aims to convert a sale.<\/strong> Right hooks need to be easily comprehensible, work on all digital devices, including mobile, and meet the conventions of the platforms they appear on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While the right hook is the content that creates a sale, jabs are just as important<\/strong>. If you were in a boxing ring with an opponent, you couldn\u2019t just throw a right hook out of nowhere; your opponent would slip out of the way. You need to set up an opportunity to throw the hook by throwing jabs first. It\u2019s the same in marketing\u2014before you ask a customer for a sale, you need to build a relationship with them.<\/strong> There\u2019s no universal combination of jabs and hooks that result in a sale every time\u2014you\u2019ll have to experiment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But how do you create great jabs and hooks to attract customers<\/a>? These eight tips apply to any platform:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Use native content including high-quality images. <\/strong>For example, people go on Pinterest to look at aspirational images. If your brand shares aspirational images, people on Pinterest will be interested in your posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Tailor your jabs to the customer\u2019s desires.<\/strong> For example, if you\u2019re a cosmetics company, you might create an Instagram contest that encourages people to share photos of themselves wearing your products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Make sure your hooks include a price and link to the right place.<\/strong> For example, on Tumblr, Target posted about a dress and included links that took customers directly to the dress product page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Take advantage of pop culture.<\/strong> For example, on Tumblr, comedian Paul Scheer posted about Breaking Bad<\/em> to insert himself into a topic that people were already discussing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Make your content micro. <\/strong>For example, on National Sibling Day, Netflix tweeted the line \u201cHey brother\u201d from Arrested Development<\/em>, which Netflix had just recently aired. The only other text was a hashtag and link.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. Maintain your identity. <\/strong>For example, include your logo or slogan on the images you post on Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. Cross-pollinate.<\/strong> For example, Surf Taco has a Twitter following that\u2019s almost 13 times larger than its Instagram following, and on Twitter, they linked to an Instagram photo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. Don\u2019t interrupt. <\/strong>Don\u2019t use banner ads or pop-ups, which are highly interruptive. When you interrupt someone from their media with an ad, at best they\u2019re annoyed, at worst, they now hate your brand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Using these persuasive advertising techniques, your social media presence will attract your target audience and more to your company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As you\u2019re in the advertising stage, you should already have a brand (i.e. a logo, slogan, symbol, etc.) that customers can easily identify your company with. One of the most persuasive techniques in advertising is to plug your brand\u2019s details into a story structure<\/a> that casts your customer as the protagonist. This strategy shows how your brand will help them reach their story\u2019s happy ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Building a StoryBrand<\/em><\/a>, Donald Miller devised his own formula of story structure into which you can enter the details of your company to create a storyline<\/em>: a document telling the story of how your brand helps customers achieve their goals. You can then draw from the storyline to craft every piece of marketing collateral for your brand. The result will be cohesive, concise, and clear marketing that resonates with customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To create a story<\/a>, Miller advocates using his StoryBrand 7-Part Framework<\/a>. This is a simplified version of the most common storytelling structure used in commercial films. Using this, you\u2019ll create what Miller calls a \u201cBrandScript,\u201d: a document describing your customer\u2019s story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are the seven parts to this effective persuasive technique in advertising, showcasing your customer\u2019s (the protagonist\u2019s) journey to buy your (the mentor\u2019s) product:<\/p>\n\n\n\n After using these methods, your new customers will be so satisfied that they won\u2019t get enough of your business. And hopefully, they\u2019ll bring their friends that will become loyal customers who will never abandon your company for a rival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Are there any other persuasive techniques in advertising that we missed? Let us know in the comments below!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Do you want to drive more sales? What are the best persuasive techniques in advertising? Advertising is an essential part of business, but it can take up a big part of your time and budget. That\u2019s why every business needs effective advertisements that are budget-friendly, appealing to customers, and guarantee sales. Here are the best persuasive techniques in advertising to grow your business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":23991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,104],"tags":[521],"class_list":["post-92391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-marketing","tag-list","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\n1. Appeal to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Use Ethos to Persuade Your Audience<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Use Pathos to Persuade Your Audience<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Use Logos to Persuade Your Audience<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Create Good Ads<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Steps to Creating Good Ads<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3. Take Advantage of Social Media<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Jabs and Right Hooks<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4. Advertise Your Brand With a Story<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Final Words<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n