Spreading Ideas
Buyers are on a journey – from being unaware of a problem to solving the problem. Marketing Operations maps marketing and sales activities to the stages of the buyer’s journey, activities which create value for the buyer at each stage.
It is through your ideas that you motivate buyers to move forward – ideas that answer buyer questions and solve buyer problems. The persuasiveness of your ideas can cause buyers to change how they think, feel, believe and act. They help buyers move from stage to stage in their journey.
How do we communicate our ideas in a way that the audience will hear, remember, and act upon them?
Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, provides a comprehensive structure for moving your audience to change their mood, change their mind, and change their willingness to act.
The purpose of your argument is to win the audience over to your point of view. Do this by:
- Establishing your goals
- Controlling the issue by making the chief topic what is advantageous for the audience.
- Deciding whether you want to appeal to the audience by emphasizing your character, your logic, or by appealing to their emotions.
- Setting a persuasive time and medium for your argument. The Greeks called this Kairos, choosing the supreme moment when your audience is most receptive to your argument.
Ethos: Argument by appealing to character
The basis for this argument is the strength of your reputation. Its main aspects are your virtue, your practical wisdom, and your disinterest. When working to win over your audience, a sterling reputation is not just good, it’s persuasive.
Logos: Argument by logic
If arguments were people, logic would be the brainy one, the one that thinks clearly and concisely. Logos doesn’t just follow the rules of logic, it builds on what the audience is already thinking. It uses deduction and induction; it knows when to concede for advantage and how to re-frame the discussion. It will detect your logical fallacies call you on rhetorical fouls.
Pathos: Argument by appealing to emotion
Appealing to emotion can cause a change in mood, make the buyer more receptive to your logic, and persuade buyers to feel an emotional commitment to the choice or decision you’d like them to make. Show your audience you understand how they are feeling by demonstrating sympathy; then change the mood to suit your argument. Use story to invoke the beliefs of the audience and give them a virtual experience. Appeal to the group’s sense of identity and then ask them to make the choice that is consistent with their identity.
Story
Stories are fundamental to how we experience the world, how we organize it in our minds, and how we communicate our experience to others.
Stories are easier to remember than abstract advice. A story has a character, it has details, and something is at stake. It has a conflict, a protagonist we care about whose expectations crash into a harsh and objective reality.
A story is when life gets thrown out of balance. A customer rejects the terms of a contract, investors threaten to pull out of a deal, or the new version of the product has an unexplained failure. It’s when there is a conflict between what you thought was going to happen and what actually happens.
How to use story when you want to persuade, to win the audience over to your side?
- Emotion – When you want to change someone’s mood, tell a story.
- Logic – You can use examples to make your inductive case – facts, comparisons, or story. Story is the strongest.
- Belief – Invoke the past experience of your audience (e.g. through telling a story) or to create an expectation. Your descriptions will invoke the emotions you want your audience to feel.
