Your audience is looking for reasons to trust you.
They’re also looking for reasons not to trust you.
Why?
Because chances are really freaking high that they’ve been burned by an offer before.
Take the Shake Weight:
When the Shake Weight came out in 2009, it promised to be a “flab-busting breakthrough.” That promise helped it sail to a cool $40 million in sales across its first year, despite the fact that plenty of studies showed that it was…errrrr…not at all worth the fitness hype.
Now, you could argue that no one and their momma was buying the Shake Weight for its fitness capabilities.
(The vibes it threw off were way more bachelorette gag gift than legit fitness fad.)
But if you’re a brand focused on building long-term, deeply-held relationships with your audience (the kind that lead to sales and repeat sales)…
Then you’ve gotta make it abso-freaking-lutely clear that you’re serious as an NFL player in the last quarter of a tied-game Super Bowl about what your offer can do.
No crossed fingers. No half truths. No smooth, sleazy salesman tactics to be found.
So how do you help your audience believe that your offer is really freaking legit? (Legit enough for a wallet to be whipped out?)
The 1, 2, 3 of proving your offer is awesome AF
First you have to make an argument for what your product can do.
Then you need to show that it’s possible — even likely — that your offer will be able to do that thing for your audience.
Of course, if you’re talking about arguments then you have to take your hints from one of the OG argumentative masters:
Aka: Aristotle.
Sure, he’s been dead wayyyyy longer than modern marketing has been alive.
But the dude knew how to build relationships through carefully-considered (and ethical) word play.
And in the eyes of ole Ari, to make a good argument you need 3 things:
1). Ethos: aka clear indicators of your credibility
2). Logos: aka logical proof that you’re offer can, like, work
3). Pathos: aka real emotions that make it clear you’re a real person and not a robotic chunk of metal
If all that Ancient Greek lingo got your brain tied up…
Let’s simplify things to a 5th grader kinda level.
To make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, you need 3 things:
Peanut butter | jelly | bread
Remove the peanut butter – and it’s just jam on bread.
Remove the bread – and it’s just peanut butter and jam slapped on a table all willy nilly.
To communicate in a way that will get people to sit up and pay the heck attention – well, you need 3 ingredients too.
Except instead of pantry staples, it comes down to:
Ethos | Pathos | Logos
Or, if you still aren’t convinced of the coolness of the Greek way of naming things:
Your credibility | Your audience’s emotions | A logical message
Wondering what the talk about what these look like in action? Or how they can powerfully be used in your brand messaging?
Well…
Ethos: “I’m legit, I swear!”
Would you prefer to learn child rearing skills from:
A). A mother of 3 kids who has a master’s degree in early education and taught preschool for a good two decades
or
B). A happily childless millennial whose only interactions with people under the age of 5 is when their brother’s family comes for Christmas once a year
*Ding ding dinnnggggggg!!!*
Can’t we all agree that Option A is the winner here?
And can we also agree that you’d:
• Never take investing advice from someone who has never invested a cent
• Never learn to cook from someone who burns the house down while trying to boil water
• Never take hair care advice from someone who is bald. (Unless they happened to make it clear that they’re a celebrity hairstylist in disguise.)
This list could go on and on, but you get the picture.
You, like everyone else in the world, want to know that the person selling you something is qualified to uphold their end of the promise.
Ethos in action: how to credibility-ify your messaging
If you’ve ever popped on to a website and see a “trusted by” bar like this:
If you’ve ever seen branding photos like this or this:
Then you’ve also been ethos-ed.
If you’ve ever seen a celebrity endorsement?
Ethos-ed.
Or seen an advertisement that says something like:
The #1 movie in the world!!
Ethos-ed.
Or:
Loved by 1,000,000+ subscribers
Ethos-ed.
All of these trust indicators are working to do one thing, and do one things realllllllyyyyy well:
Prove that the speaker is legit.
Because you better believe that a happily childless millennial with no experience with kids would have a hard time wrangling 10 of them into one picture.
And you better believe that having 1,000,000+ subscribers means you’re doing something that people like.
And you better believe that being trusted by people who have been in big magazines means you’re legit enough to attract (and please) the right people.
You need ethos. There’s no ifs-ands-or-whens about it.
But how do you integrate that ethos? That’s where things get brand specific.
Building out ethos can look like:
1). Lavishing your marketing materials (think: websites, promotional pamphlets, presentations) with trust bars and/or testimonials that show off:
• who you’ve worked with
• publications you’ve appeared in
• certifications you’ve received
• and any really cool accolades you’ve racked up
2). Making your “who” part of your brand story:
• by openly talking about how you became the brand you are
• including all the trials, tribulations, success stories, ups, downs, and roll-arounds that got you there
• and how that journey has taught you something really freaking essential that makes you uniquely qualified to help your audience now
3). Making your “why” part of your brand story:
• by giving a behind-the-scenes look into why you do what you do
• to show the underlying values/dreams driving your brand momentum
• and to show — genuinely and seriously — that you give a sh*t beyond the flow of money from their pocket to yours
(Does it seem weird to include a “why” as part of building your credibility as a brand? In Aristotle’s world, establishing a genuine sense of care for your audience was BIG. By giving your brand “why,” you make a genuine connection by genuinely telling your audience what drives you.)
Pathos: “there’s real emotions here, I double dog swear!”
All the Trekkies out there are about to be pumpeeeddddddd!
Because there’s an episode in Star Trek: The Next Generation that is so freaking relevant right now.
In a season four episode, Data (an android/robot dude with metal where his heart should be) gets wooed by this love-lusting non-robot woman named Jenna.
Everything seems to be moving right along. Data is into it (as much as a robot can be).
Jenna is into it (way more than a fully human woman dating a robot should be).
But it all comes crashing down when Jenna realizes one little, teeny, tiny, pivotal fact that the audience has known all along:
Data is pretty darn bad at emotions (because duh – he’s a robot, not a human). And that makes him hard to date.
If you’re bad at emotions?
Your audience will find it hard to date…or, errrrrr…buy from you too.
That’s where pathos comes in as a cape-wearing superpower to take your brand messaging from emotionlessly android-esque to authentically human.
Pathos in action: how to emotionally connect with your audience (through messaging)
Now, let’s get one thing straight:
Pathos isn’t about manipulating your audience into certain emotions (through totally-made-up sob stories or false senses of urgency).
It’s about genuinely connecting through telling stories, using words, and crafting a brand narrative that your audience will actually care about.
Building out pathos can look like:
1). A consistent brand voice that:
• Communicates your position in your market
• Sets the groundwork for the kind of relationship you want to have with your audience
• Strategically works to tell your story — down to every punctuation point
(Let’s pause for a sec and build this one out. There’s a huge difference between the brand who plays on emotions through “tough love” like this:
You’ve got to woo your customers. Or your competitors will.
And one who plays with aspiration like this:
Get perfectly-primed prospects popping in your inbox like you’re THE boy band and they’re raving pre-teens
Will both attract an audience? Sure. But will both attract the same audience? Unlikely. The key is to strategically build a brand voice that attracts the audience you want.
Okay, now back to the regularly-scheduled programming…)
2). Using the real words and stories of your audience as inspo.
• Collect Voice of Customer data (or VOC) by implementing customer surveys, doing some good ole fashioned customer interviews, or rooting through your review (or the reviews of your competitors)
• Use that VOC to enter the real conversations already happening in your audience’s head — by getting on-the-ground info on what your audience is thinking and how they’re talking about offers like yours
• Incorporate your audience’s real stories, real frustrations, real successes, and even real words into your marketing materials
3). Get as specific as possible:
• A sandwich is cool. A pesto-mozzarella sandwich slathered with herby house-made pesto, garlic aioli, pickled onions, arugula from the backyard garden, and freshly sliced tomato is wayyyyy better.
• Add layers of specificity to the stories you’re telling about your audience – going from the general (“this can help elevate your business”) to the highly specific (“Say goodbye to those 4am stress sweats as you worry about paying your bills with an empty calendar and no clients on the horizon.”)
Logos: “this offer is legit, I triple dog swear!!!”
My family has a problem.
We tend to be good cooks. Great cooks even.
But one thing we’re not so great at?
Writing recipes.
Ask my mom how to make her family-famous shrimp and grits and you’ll be sent a roundup of ingredients that looks more like a shopping list than a how-to guide for making a holiday-worthy meal.
The “how” of the dish (as well as a few ingredients that so obviously need to be included that they don’t even need to get written down) is all in her head.
And because I’ve made it so many times with her — it’s in my head too.
But try to hand over that recipe to the guest at the party who is all “oh my goshhhhhh, this is so gooooood, I need the recipe!” and they’ll probably be left scratching their head and heading over to the Food Network to learn how to make it from the real pros.
Logos connects the dots (through logic, evidence, and good ole fashion reason)
And by connecting the dots, logos helps you tell a full story.
One that helps your audience believe in your offer.
And believe that you’ve thought through your offer so thoroughly that it has a very good shot of actually helping them achieve the outcome you promise, and do it in a pretty friction-free way.
Logos in action: how to make them believe in your brand
So how do you absolutely smash your logos out of the park to make your audience really, really, really believe in what you do?
Building out logos can look like can look like:
1). Having:
• a clear statement of the outcomes your offer can help accomplish
• a clear vision of the way your offer fits into the real, lived experience of your audience (aka: how they’ll use it, what current solutions it might replace, and how it might impact them the day-to-day)
• a clear sense of the transformation your offer will take them on from where they started to where your offer can help them go
• a clear sense of how your offer can help them achieve that transformation — through a carefully-thought through process, set of actions, or set of easy-to-take steps
2). That you communicate clearly through:
• An email funnel flow…a message hierarchy on your website…and a strategy to your communication processes that creates a clear, full, totally super easy to understand argument for:
a). The outcomes your offer can help them accomplish
b). How that offer fits into their life in a real, lived way
c). The transformation your offer makes possible
d). The process/steps it will take to achieve that transformation
• And case studies that go behind the curtain to show…
a). Where your former client started
b). Where they got with your offer
c). how they got there: including the process you had them follow to get them from Point A to Point Z
• And, super importantly, a brand voice that hits the right strategic notes: to embody the type of experience and journey you want for your audience
Soooooo….now what?
Now you’ve got to take a good ole second to sit with your marketing materials and see if they’re setting these three key marketing principles: ethos, pathos, and logos into perfect balance. And if they’re not?
Then it’s time to be more strategic with your messaging. Book a call so we can put our brains together in support of your brand.
