Writing Persuasive

Messages
• Persuasion is the attempt to change someone’s
attitudes, beliefs, or actions.

• Successful professionals understand that

persuasion is not about trickery or getting people to
act against their own best interests; it’s about letting
audiences know they have choices and presenting
your offering in the best possible light.
 STEP 1: PLANNING
PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

Having a great idea or a

great product is not
enough; you need to be
able to convince others of
its merits.
 Analyzing the Situation
• In defining your purpose, make sure you’re clear about what you really hope to
achieve.

• The best persuasive messages are closely connected to your audience’s desires and
interests

• Consider these important questions: Who is my audience? What are my audience

members’ needs? What do I want them to do? How might they resist? Are there
alternative positions I need to examine? What does the decision maker consider to be
the most important issue? How might the organization’s culture influence my strategy?

• Demographics include characteristics such as age, gender, occupation, income, and

education.

• Psychographics include characteristics such as personality, attitudes, and lifestyle.

• If you aim to change someone’s attitudes, beliefs, or actions, it is vital to understand his
or her motivation—the combination of forces that drive people to satisfy their needs.

• Obviously, the more closely a persuasive message aligns with a recipient’s existing
motivation, the more effective the message is likely to be.
 Gathering Information

• Once your situation analysis is complete, you need

to gather the information necessary to create a
compelling persuasive message.
 Selecting the Right Combination
of Medium and Channel

• Persuasive messages are often unexpected and

sometimes even unwelcome, so choose your
medium carefully to maximize the chance of getting
through to your audience.

• Persuasive messages can be found in virtually every

communication medium, from instant messages and
podcasts to radio advertisements and skywriting.
Organizing Your Information

• Most persuasive messages use the indirect

approach.

• The choice of approach is influenced by your

position (or authority within the organization)
relative to your audience’s.
 STEP 2: WRITING
PERSUASIVE MESSAGES

Encourage a positive response to

your persuasive messages 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.
• Positive language usually happens naturally with persuasive
messages because you’re promoting an idea or product you
believe in. However, take care not to inadvertently insult your
readers by implying that they’ve made poor choices in the
past and that you’re here to save them from their misguided
ways.

• Be sure to understand cultural expectations as well.

• For example, a message that seems forthright and direct in

a low-context culture might seem brash and intrusive in a
high- context culture.

• Just as social culture affects the success of a persuasive

message, so too does the culture within an organization.
• Finally, if you are trying to persuade a skeptical or hostile audience, you must
convince them you know what you’re talking about and that you’re not trying to
mislead them. Use these techniques:

• Use simple language to avoid suspicions of fantastic claims and emotional

manipulation.

• Provide objective evidence for the claims and promises you make.

• Identify your sources, especially if your audience already respects those sources.

• Establish common ground by emphasizing beliefs, attitudes, and background

experiences you have in common with the audience.

• Be objective and present fair and logical arguments.

• Display your willingness to keep your audience’s best interests at heart.

• Persuade with logic, evidence, and compelling narratives, rather than trying to
coerce with high-pressure, “hard-sell” tactics.

• Whenever possible, try to build your credibility before you present a major
proposal or ask for a major decision.
 STEP 3: COMPLETING
PERSUASIVE MESSAGES
The pros know from experience that
details can make or break a
persuasive message, so they’re careful
not to skimp on this part of the
writing process.

Careless production undermines your

credibility, so revise and proofread
with care.
• When you evaluate your content, try to judge your argument
objectively and try not to overestimate your credibility. When
revising for clarity and conciseness, carefully match the purpose
and organization to audience needs.

• If possible, ask an experienced colleague who knows your

audience well to review your draft.

• Your design elements must complement, not detract from, your

argument.

• In addition, meticulous proofreading will identify any mechanical

or spelling errors that would weaken your persuasive potential.

• Finally, make sure your distribution methods fit your audience’s

expectations as well as your purpose.
 Developing Persuasive Business
Messages
Within the context of the three-step process, effective persuasion involves
four essential strategies: framing your arguments, balancing emotional and
logi- cal appeals, reinforcing your position, and anticipating objections.
FRAMING YOUR ARGUMENTS
• One of the most commonly used variations is called the AIDA model,
which organizes your message into four phases:

• Attention. Your first objective is to encourage your audience to want

to hear about your problem, idea, or new product—whatever your
main idea is. Be sure to find some common ground on which to build
your case.

• Interest. Provide additional details that prompt audience members

to imagine how the solution might benefit them.

• Desire. Help audience members embrace your idea by explaining

how the change will benefit them and answering potential objections.

• Action. Suggest the specific action you want your audience to take.
Include a deadline, when applicable. =
 With the AIDA model, you craft one or more messages to move recipients through four stages of
attention, interest, desire, and action. The model works well for both persuasive business messages
(such as persuading your manager to fund a new project) and marketing and sales messages.
• The AIDA model is tailor-made for using the indirect
approach, allowing you to save your main idea for the
action phase. However, it can also work with the direct
approach, in which case you use your main idea as an
attention-getter, build interest with your argument, create
desire with your evidence, and emphasize your main idea in
the action phase with the specific action you want your
audience to take.

• When your AIDA message uses the indirect approach and

is delivered by memo or email, keep in mind that your
subject line usually catches your reader’s eye first. Your
challenge is to make it interesting and relevant enough to
capture reader attention without revealing your main idea.
• With either the direct or indirect approach, AIDA
and similar models do have limitations:

• First, AIDA is a unidirectional method that

essentially talks at audiences, not with them.

• Second, AIDA is built around a single event,

such as asking an audience for a deci- sion, rather
than on building a mutually beneficial, long-term
relationship.
•
 BALANCING EMOTIONAL
AND LOGICAL APPEALS
• An emotional appeal calls on feelings or audience sympathies.

• A logical appeal uses one of three types of reasoning:

• Analogy. With analogy, you reason from specific evidence to

specific evidence, in effect “borrowing” from something familiar
to explain something unfamiliar.

• Induction. With inductive reasoning, you work from specific

evidence to a general conclusion.

• Deduction. With deductive reasoning, you work from a

generalization to a specific conclusion.
• Every method of reasoning is vulnerable to misuse. To avoid faulty logic, follow these
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.

• Avoid attacking an opponent. Attack the argument your opponent is making, not
your opponent’s character.

• Avoid oversimplifying a complex issue. For example, 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 that it’s the cause of whatever effect you’re
discussing.

• Avoid faulty analogies. Be sure that the two objects or situations being compared are
similar enough for the analogy to hold.
 REINFORCING YOUR
POSITION 


• After you’ve worked out the basic elements of your argument, step
back and look for ways to strengthen your position. Are all your
claims supported by believable evidence? Would a quotation from a
recognized expert help make your case?

• Next, examine your language. Can you find more powerful words to
convey your message?

• In addition to examining individual word choices, consider using

metaphors and other figures of speech.

• Similarly, anecdotes (brief stories) can help your audience grasp the
meaning and importance of your arguments. 

ANTICIPATING OBJECTIONS 


• Anticipate likely objections and address them before your audience can
bring them up. By doing so, you can remove these potentially negative
elements from the conversation and keep the focus on positive
communication.

• Note that you don’t need to explicitly mention a particular concern.

• If you expect a hostile audience that is biased against your plan, be sure
to present all sides of the situation. As you cover each option, explain the
pros and cons. You’ll gain additional credibility if you mention these
options before presenting your recommendation or decision.

• If you can, involve your audience in the design of the solution; people are
more likely to support ideas they help create.
 AVOIDING COMMON MISTAKES

IN PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATION
• Using a hard sell. Don’t push. No one likes being pressured into making a decision, and
communicators who take this approach can come across as being more concerned with
meeting their own goals than with satisfying the needs of their audiences. In contrast, a
“soft sell” is more like a comfortable conversation that uses calm, rational persuasion.

• Resisting compromise. Successful persuasion is often a process of give-and-take,

particularly in the case of persuasive business messages, where you don’t always get every-
thing you asked for in terms of budgets, investments, and other commitments.

• Relying solely on great arguments. Great arguments are important, but connecting with
your audience on the right emotional level and communicating through vivid language are
just as vital. Sometimes a well-crafted story can be even more compelling than dry logic.

• Assuming that persuasion is a one-shot effort. Persuasion is often a process, not a one-
time event. In many cases, you need to move your audience members along one small step
at a time rather than try to convince them to say “yes” in one huge step.