Question: if you lead a horse to water, how do you make him drink?
The answer to this is the classic saying you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. But it’s a relevant question for marketers and business owners. Because at the heart of it, you’re leading a horse to water, and you will make him drink.
So, how do you make a horse drink?
Simple, really: you make him think it was his own idea.
The key triggers of persuasion happen in the listener, not the persuader. In fact, the persuader is only responsible for about 10% of the persuasion. A listener is persuaded because they’ve decided to be persuaded.
Your job, as a business owner, is to make that decision happen, even if it might not have happened in a vacuum. And in the digital era, your writing is a crucial part of persuasion. Here’s how you can write more persuasive content.
Remember ‘PERSUADE’
Want to write persuasive content? It’s easier than you think. Just remember to persuade–or rather, the acronym PERSUADE:
- Personal tone
- Emotive language
- Rhetorical questions
- Say again
- Undermine opposing arguments
- Anecdotes
- Direct address
- Exaggeration
You’ll notice that nothing about this acronym involves selling. That’s the first key to web content, even if you are actually trying to sell something–stop thinking about it in terms of wheedling someone like a used car salesman.
Instead, think of it as an invitation. Which would you rather have: a pretty invitation offering you a place at a party and promising through its lovely design what kind of party it will be, or a used car salesman who hammers you until you give up?
Rhetorical questions are an excellent example of this logic at work. When you’re trying to lead someone to think a certain way, one well-known trick is to give them a blank canvas where they can fill in their own thoughts (after you’ve given them the framing tools, of course). Half-sentences in a speech, for example, invite the listener to fill in the other half of the sentence, making it seem as though the speaker and the listener agree even though the listener did all the lifting.
Of course, you can’t leave half-finished sentences in your writing. Rhetorical questions are a way to achieve the same effect by involving the reader in the writer’s thought process.
Show Your Credibility
Of course, you also have to demonstrate to your reader that your line of thinking is worth reading. That’s where credibility comes into play.
Once upon a time, we lived in a world where people trusted everything on the Internet. Fun fact: the Internet was once the sole purview of academics sharing research with each other. They could trust everything that was sent because they knew the source was credible–often because they knew the source personally.
Of course, the Internet has grown up since then.
These days, if you want to be trusted, you have to prove your trustworthiness. As in academia, one of the best ways to do that is to cite your sources–preferably respected industry leaders.
And if you make claims in your writing, always back them up with good sources. It’s one of the little ways to show readers you’ve done your homework (so they don’t have to).
Provide Actionable Benefits
Of course, readers are also coming to you because they want you to solve a problem. If you want to persuade them that your solution is the best one, you have to offer them actionable benefits.
Far too many companies get caught up in promoting the features of their service. That’s not what readers care about.
Readers care about the value of your service.
Features are geeky. They’re technical. They’re quirky. And honestly, readers don’t care what the feature is so long as it solves their problem.
But value? Value is different. Value conveys a world where challenges are magically dissipated and problems are solved. Exactly the kind of world your readers want to occupy.
You convey value through actionable benefits, i.e. readers knowing exactly what they’re getting and, more importantly, how it’s going to benefit them. Actionable benefits should align with your target customer’s pain points in order to relieve those pain points.
Be Brief
As the Bard once mused, brevity is the soul of wit. It’s also the soul of persuasion.
It’s quick. It’s focused. It’s effective.
Like Google.
Answers to every conceivable question in less than a second?
Yes, please.
Need to Write Persuasive Content?
You can convince customers of quite a lot of things–the quality of your business’s services, for example. The key is knowing how to do it, and when it comes to your content, you’re not going to get there without outstanding writing.
That’s where Ivy League Content comes in.
We know good content as well as you know your business. And we’re here to show you what good content can do for your business. Click here to let us know what you’re looking for in your content.