One sentence BIG IDEA:

3 Ways to be more persuasive in your marketing content

Why is this relevant to marketers?

Often telling someone about a product or service is not enough to move them toward action. Sometimes marketing content needs to be persuasive, but without being salesy, especially if you are writing something like a bylined article that has to be accepted by an editor to be published. Below are three ways to make your marketing content more persuasive without being salesy.

1) Agree before you disagree.

If you would like to persuade people to adopt a new way of thinking or a new way of doing things, before presenting the new idea, find a way to acknowledge some value in the existing way of doing things before asking people to change their mind. By doing this, you first align yourself with your reader and then ask them to follow your line of thought to the next step with you.

Example: Personalization has transformed digital marketing and increased customer engagement.

Now advances in digital printing capabilities have made it possible and affordable for marketers to use personalization techniques in experiential package design.

2) Replace “dissenting” words and with “addition” words.

A dissenting word like “but” can automatically raise mental defense mechanisms; while, a word like “and” helps to continue a line of thought and add to an idea instead of making people make a mental leap in another direction.

Example: Tiny houses offer an affordable living option, and they are also an ideal way for homeowners to add additional space without renovating or moving.

3) Address logical objections before emotional ones.

Logical objections to a new idea often come easy. Emotional objections tend to be buried deeper. By addressing and overcoming logical objections first, you open the door to deal with the deeper emotional objections.

Challenge for Marketers: Rewrite an existing piece of content to be more persuasive and test the difference.

Relevant hashtags: #Marketing, #PR #mediarelations #SGMCmeeting #SGMCTip #contentmarketing #persuasivewriting