Effective persuasion involves knowing your audience and a failure to persuade can happen if you do not tailor your delivery.
Superficial thinking versus deep thinking can occur in people’s minds daily and both mechanisms of processing can be affected depending on what state of mind a person is in at that moment. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) developed by Petty & Cacioppo (1986) demonstrates how likely someone is to process a message using either the Peripheral or Central Route, and how this can lead to attitude change. Crafting persuasive appeals using the Elaboration Likelihood Model involves three factors: Source Credibility, Accountability, and an Individual’s emotions.
Peripheral vs Central Processing
Depending on the audience, the message can be altered to focus on either peripheral or central processing or even both. If the audience is easily persuaded by aesthetics, superficial ideas, and status then the message should be tailored using the peripheral processing route. This type of audience requires limited analysis of the information because they are not necessarily motivated by the verbal message and a visual may have a better impact. If the audience is articulate and pays close attention to details that are processed through the central route, then the delivery needs to have strength in the argument, credibility, and congruence. This form of central processing is usually personal and goes straight to the center of the audience's thinking.
An example of how both peripheral and central processing is used in online marketing:
There are two potential customers, both in need of a new cell phone. Customer A loves the latest technology and anything eye-catching and trendy. Customer B does a lot of research before making major purchases and wants the best value for their money. Customer A shops online for almost everything and goes directly to the apple website to find the phone to purchase. Customer B rarely shops online but happened to get a direct marketing email that morning advertising a sale on their website, which leads Customer B to click on the email link and look at the site. The landing page on apple shows both Customers A & B information that triggers both central and peripheral processing.
The apple site does this well by including prices & financing specials (targets customer B), learn more links, a large variety of images, and a call-to-action button (all above the fold). Customer A will see the flashy new phone that has just been released, while Customer B will see the pricing and links to learn more about each phone that is for sale. There aren’t any distractions like pop-up ads or even a slider that changes what is on the screen.
“Distractions can weaken the strength of the central message and allow for peripheral cues, like the attractiveness of a celebrity endorser”.
Although distractions like images of celebrity endorsement are valuable for the Customer A type of processing, they are not necessary since the visual hierarchy with the phone images is enough to draw Customer A in.
Working Together for Persuasion
When working on the web or within social media, it is important to target both the central and peripheral ways of processing information to change an audience's attitude. Although there can be limitations in this model, further research has been done on the ELM to show that background factors can also play a factor in attitude change and decision making. Knowing your audience and tailoring the message to the processing route needed, will play a pivotal role in crafting persuasive appeals.
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