Persuasive Writing Course

Marketing Communications. Connect better with your audience.

COVID-19 update: arrangement of our courses

We are now delivering courses online and in-person. Please check the delivery format of each class before enrolling.

Please note that course materials (excluding prescribed texts) are shared electronically within 48 hours of course commencement. Printing is not available.

An immersive writing course for content marketers, covering all the persuasive copywriting skills you’ll need to capture more leads and inspire more actions.

Using a sequence of tools and techniques, we start by planning your messages from scratch. We then apply your messaging blueprint to a range of short, everyday formats such as eDMs, social media headlines, email marketing headlines and newsletters.

Throughout the day, you’ll learn the essentials of using brand tone, weaving in persuasive elements and crafting for flair. Through exercises, examples and open discussion, you will gain a solid overview of promotional writing in your business.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should be able to:

• use the strategies that creative agencies take to develop a campaign, from formalising the tone of voice to writing the first banner ads
• generate more emotive angles for your marketing copy
• gain practice writing for different audiences within one brand, including dialling formality up and down, and adapting the content for different formats
• incorporate the best persuasive arguments possible for each piece of writing, choosing from a list of 10 possibilities
• review your own and others’ writing for simplicity and effectiveness, focusing on five essential indicators.

Content

Campaign launch

No project should start without thoroughly workshopping the brief. Here, you’ll define the product’s tangible and emotional benefits, and the multiple different creative directions you could develop from this. In this section, we also formalise the ideal tone of voice and set a timeline of deliverables and outcomes.

Designing the user journey

Learn to craft your campaign around headings, memes, names and other short units that encapsulate the essence of what you’re trying to say. In this section, we cover different tips and techniques for writing these, and place them into loose templates that suggest the split-second impact of your messages.

The 10 elements of persuasion

Good persuasive writing employs a number of powerful psychological triggers, and we look at ten important ones in this section. Examples include telling your reader ‘why’, showing you understand your prospect, and giving them something for free.

Drumming up hype

We look at the essential formats you’ll need to master in the early campaign stages: eDMs, digital banners, registration forms, invitations and more. This section also talks about how to extend the core tone of voice to reach different audience segments effectively.

Add stylistic flair

Learning to review for effectiveness: ensuring that SEO is cleverly used (but not overused), verbs and adjectives are strong and evocative, and you’ve added plenty of rhythm using devices such as alliteration and parallel grammar.

Intended audience

Aimed at mid-career marketers who can explain their business features and benefits clearly enough, but want some tips on how to make their messages more memorable, on-brand and inspiring.

If your business style doesn’t allow for much storytelling or free association, consider our Business Writing Course: Essentials instead. Here, you’ll learn to write internal comms (letters, memos and so on) and short summaries in a clear, factual style that may well fill your business marketing needs.

Delivery modes

• Face-to-face, presenter-taught training
• Online training via the platform Zoom

Delivery style

Learning methods include open discussion, group exercises, pair work and individual response to mini tests throughout the day. Most of the exercises can be adapted to a marketing piece you are currently working on, or you can practice using the fictional examples.