How appealing is your message?
by Andrew Shedden
I want you to imagine you are the chairperson of the Entrepreneur’s Benevolence Fund (EBF) and as such are in charge of the annual donation drive. Being a typical entrepreneur you’re sitting around with your fellow entrepreneurs in an upscale four star restaurant eating caviar stuffed lobsters, washing it all down with magnums of chateau de chateau champagne.
Once you’re replete the real business discussion starts and you are asked what kind of appeal you are going to craft to get people to donate to the EBF. In your most orotund voice you elucidate the sales pitch you have lovingly crafted for the banks of aggressive telemarketers.
“Hello. I am calling from the EBF for our annual fund-raising appeal. The EBF exists to make rich entrepreneurs richer. One of the ways we do this is by calling people lower on the corporate food chain and shaming them into making a donation. All money raised is generally misdirected for our own nefarious needs and we make a point of wasting the rest.”
Clearly this type of appeal will be somewhat ineffective. Oh horror of horrors, you may have to:
Resign from the EBF
Get a real 9 to 5 job
Receive full benefits and a pension plan
Perhaps a little more research into crafting an appealing message would have made you a fund raising champion.
For best results please add appealing content
When putting your marketing message together you need to determine how you’re going to persuasively shape the content of your message. A little preplanning will save you untold hours of time when it comes time to sharpen the old pencil, blow the dust off of the keyboard, or buy a new bottle of ink. While there are numerous ways to appeal to your target market in most cases the following three will work for you.
Rational Appeals
Rational appeals are structured to cater to self-interest. This type of appeal tends to be directed toward buyers within industry or other types of technically oriented buyers. In order to succeed with a rational appeal you need to appeal to logic.
These buyers are predominantly interested in facts and figures. Their decision making is methodical and deliberate and largely based on measurable criteria. Rational appeals tend to work well with industrial buyers, technical people, scientists, and engineers.
Emotional Appeals
One of the most effective and most used appeals is the emotional appeal. Emotional appeals are designed to influence buying decisions by stirring up positive or negative emotions. Emotional appeals can make you feel guilt, joy, happiness, pride, or even shame.
Emotional appeals derive their power from the fact that most people buy emotionally and justify their purchases logically. This is a key factor to keep in mind when creating your marketing message. If we all bought logically we would buy the most basic transportation, fly economy class, and all live in 1200 square foot bungalows.
The second thing to remember is that people don’t buy things but rather they buy what the thing will do for them. For this reason you need to always make a point of emphasizing the benefits of your product or service in your appeal.
Moral Appeals
Have you ever bought something from the Body Shop? How about shoes from manufacturers that guarantee they don’t utilize sweat shops? These are both examples of a positive response to a moral appeal. Moral appeals are designed to influence action by stirring up a sense of fairness or even moral outrage.
When used with caution, moral appeals have tremendous power to influence buying behaviour. If your message becomes overly strident, extreme, or polarizing in nature it will rapidly lose its effectiveness. People resent overt forms of manipulation and a “hard sell” approach will turn them off in droves. For maximum effectiveness a balanced, reasonable, and highly structured appeal is your best bet.
Regardless of the method of appeal you decide to utilize in your marketing message remember to write your message like you are talking to one person, because you are.
