By Donna Estrada
Every day you are bombarded with the tons of advertisements not just on the television but also on the internet. As you walk along the streets, you’ll find out huge billboards that contain faces of its brand ambassadors. It’s literally everywhere and this is the challenge to every business owners out there.
How would these people make sure that their business will stand out from its competitors? Of course, with the help of advertisements. The question here is that almost all of the companies right now are incorporating the act of persuading the consumers to buy from them but what are the surefire ways to make the people buy your product?
The advertisement is a tricky way of marketing your products since it could affect how the consumer would view your product–in a good or bad way.
Persuasive Communication is the key
In Persuasive communication, you will be taught with these techniques that help business owners in creating the right ads for their target audience. Being able to understand how these techniques are used will help you determine the suitable strategy for your business.
- Bandwagon – This is about how telling your audience that they need to buy your product to be “in crowd” and not be left out. Sometimes, you use popular artists as endorsers. These artists may influence their fans to support the product that you’re selling.
This strategy is more popular to the younger generation. If your target consumers are teenagers, you may use this as the prominent technique in creating your advertisement.
- Repetition – This is considered as the effective way to promote your product. If this is properly done, people would get familiar with what you’re selling. Be careful with the use of this strategy for it might annoy your target audience that may lead to failure.
Catchphrases are used in this kind of technique. If your product is new, you may use this strategy to make your potential consumers be familiar with it.
- Testimonial – Sometimes, this is called as the claims. This is a great strategy for a business that targets people who seem to have trust issues. There will be set of people talking about the effectiveness of the product.
It can be a testimonial from the celebrity, expert’s opinion, man on the street, and the satisfied user of the product. This technique persuades other people with the perception that if other people like to use it, you will going to like it also.
- Emotional Appeal – Have you watched advertisements from Thailand? If not yet, you may prefer to watch it and be inspired with how they able to come up with a storyline that is connected to their products.
If you’ll make your advertisement related to the feelings of your target audience, there will be a higher possibility that it will be shared on social media. Since social media has the power to influence its users, your product would also get it share of promotion.
The main purpose of this is to trigger the emotional sense of your consumers. You need to look for a concept that will not just attract the people but to create an impact. By doing this, your product will be remembered together with the video.
- Humor – The best strategy to attract your consumers is by making your ads funny. This is due to the reason that people like to be entertained than to be feed with figures and serious-toned ads.
When you’re using this kind of technique, you need to be careful. Since there are products that shouldn’t be advertised in a comedic way. For example, the products that need a proper guidance from the experts or needs a supervision by the doctors. Unless it’s your product is involves desserts or entertainment-related devices.
- Rhetorical Question – this is the kind of technique wherein you’re using the strategy that your big competitors are using but using the language in an artful way. But, you should make sure that it is appropriate to your consumers or else you will fail in this kind of technique.
Ask persuasive questions that could make your target audience feel optimistic about your product. You can even use hyperboles and metaphors to make a point of the statements on your advertisements.
Grabs consumer’s attention
Flyers are scarce in the world of marketing. Since we’re now in the digital marketing era, people are now into their social networking sites. But, how would you attract the attention of your target audience in these media platforms?
You must make your audience stop scrolling down and make them give a second look on your poster. To answer the question, simply use the element of layouting. Know the correct size of letters, proper way of editing the graphic images, and how would you add colors that will entice your consumers.
If you’re hands-on in the layout of your advertisement posters, you will find out that not all letters meet a baseline. You will know what are the colors and designs that you need to use to attract your audience. You will get to distinguish the proper way of layouting a poster without compromising the message.
Here are some of the examples of eye-catching ad posters:
As you notice, some ad posters limit the words they input if the images say everything. Without the text, the photo used might mislead your target audiences. As much as possible, add some text for clarity
Injects other persuasion theories
Aside from the techniques, there are other persuasion theories you could use as the basis to promote your business.
- Amplification Hypothesis – This theory involves the certainty of the influencer to the said product that made their statements more believable. The influencers that you should tap in endorsing your product shouldn’t be in any controversy so that they won’t be questioned.
- Conversion Theory – No matter how unpopular the ideas of the person, there will still be a chance that it will be changed. The majority can still be easily influenced by the minority group since their decisions are still not concrete unlike the latter.
- Information Manipulation Theory – This is about breaking the four conversational maxims. These maxims are quantity, quality, relation, and manner.
- Priming – Your target audience can be influenced by the introduction of new thoughts and ideas. Due to this reason, the consumers are more likely to be persuaded because the primed ideas are being made.
There are six examples of priming, namely: repetitive priming, conceptual priming, perceptual priming, associative priming, reverse priming, and masked priming.
- Scarcity Principle – If the consumer thought that they lack something, there will be a huge chance that they will crave for it.
- Social Influence – The more authoritative the sources are, the more you could influence your consumers to buy your product.
Aside from the six theories that were mentioned, there are still other persuasion theories that you could incorporate into your advertising strategies. These theories can be your basis since it also involves the psychological factor in the person’s mind.
Persuading a person is not easy as it may seem not unless you’re skillful enough. It will take much time to be able to master and learn the techniques and theories but you will eventually get used to it.
You should really know who are your target audiences for you to be able to know what techniques and theories are suitable for your consumers. Knowing the wants and need of your consumers can be a factor in determining the right strategy to persuade them.
Donna Estrada is an editor for Scoopfed and a graduate of Bachelor of Arts in Journalism. She spends her time reading books, blogs, and sometimes writes contents for Aviv Movers.
