Beyond the Fundamentals: Strategy and Tactics

Once the fundamentals of persuasive writing are mastered – benefits not features, “you” not “we”, headlines, calls to action, etc. – the real mastery begins. This is where the art of the propagandist lies. This is where the power of copy manifests. This is where commercial interests focus.

Lying at the root of the most powerful kind of rhetoric is an appeal to emotions. It’s the utilization of psychological devices – an unremitting creeping into the greatest fears and the greatest desires of humans – that gives power to words. In short, it’s the treatment of text as it relates to the emotional human mind.

The desired result of persuasion is the forming or changing of a subject’s cognitive narrative – how someone structures their understanding – in a target audience. It is a form of social influence and works to guide people in adopting certain behaviors.

By understanding how humans behave, we come closer to approaching an understanding of how psychological triggers are created. These kind of psychological tactics most often fly under the radar of a reader’s perceptions. The mind is nudged towards a certain emotional response, and while not always successful for each reader, these strategies are surprisingly effective over an aggregate of responses.

One essential and well-known understanding of consumer behavior is that people buy on emotion, then justify later through reasoning. In other words, the emotional responder makes the decision to purchase; the rational mind later justifies that decision. Working with this simple aspect of human behavior largely informs the way marketers have conducted successful campaigns throughout modern history.

Many of the simple tactics used by savvy marketers are gleaned from academic studies in psychology, and also from plain old empirical results. How the mind works is a fascinating study; how that information is then utilized is what puts those studies into deliberate practice.

Some common methods use the concepts of scarcity, reciprocation, commitment and consistency, involvement devices, presuppositions, linguistic binds, and the use of cognitive dissonance, among many other techniques.

These methods put into practice how words speak to the unconscious mind. They rely on appealing to the mind rather than on blunt coercion. The art of persuasion is a sophisticated and powerful tool that very much makes up our social landscape – and always has. As noted by Artistole, “Rhetoric is the art of discovering, in a particular case, the available means of persuasion.”

Back to List of Articles