When writing an advertisement, your aim is to persuade your readers to follow a particular course of action - willingly.There are three elements in this process:
1. you must win trust of your audience
2. you must appeal to their emotions
3. you must rationalise their decision for them, so that they feel comfortable in making it
If you succeed in all three areas, you will have engineered their consent to buy your product or service.
Here are some tips to help you to achieve this desirable state of affairs:
1. Win Trust of Your Audience
The first step is to show that you are a person who can be trusted - so try to give your audience something of value - advice, interesting "inside" information or helpful tips. Indicate why your opinion here should be valued - give a little detail about your background and your credentials.
To win their trust, you must know something about your audience:
What sort of people are they? How old are they? What are their special interests?
You must also try to find some common ground with your audience:
Begin with a point of common interest e.g. "I'm sure we all want to give our kids best start possible..." Anticipate their responses by using rhetorical questions e.g. "You're probably wondering where you'll find time to ..."
Use generalisations to persuade your audience to agree with you - people feel more comfortable when they know that, "80% of families use ..." or that "8 out of 10 teachers state that parental interest improves student grades ..."
2. Appeal to Emotions
We all know that people respond to emotional appeals more readily than to intellectual appeals, so utilise this in your advertising. There are three steps to follow: