9.4 Organizational Strategies for Persuasive Messages

Persuasive presentations are unique messages. In a persuasive presentation the goal is to take and defend a position on a topic and convince others on something related to your topic (convincing them to consider your position, or to agree with your position, or perhaps to go out and act in some way related to the position/topic). The organization strategy you choose for the persuasive speech should support your persuasive objective (i.e., convincing them to consider, to agree with you, to act). Structures are generally logical in nature, and often use the appropriate organizational patterns presented above (cause-effect/effect-cause, problem-solution) and these are sometimes presented using what is called “parallel structure.” Discussion of a specific cause is followed by an explanation of a specific effect, or a specific problem followed by an evaluation of a specific solution.

Another strategy to use in building a persuasive message is to argue why your position and point of advocacy presents a comparative advantage over the status quo (current state of affairs) or over other possible solutions or actions. A speaker might use comparative advantage when a variety of solutions have been presented/are available, none of which is perfect, but perhaps yours offers distinct benefits (or advantages) that the others do not. This means your point of advocacy, when compared to others, is advantageous, and thus the best one to pursue. You can use a comparative advantage approach with a simple problem-solution structure for a persuasive message.

Persuasive messages use motivation to get audiences to act. These motivational appeals are highly developed in Monroe’s Motivated Sequence organizational pattern and the AIDA persuasive speech organizational pattern.

This section is adapted from the following sources:

Organizing Persuasive Speeches in Elements of Public Speaking by Marty Ennes Copyright © by Lumen Learning licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License 

Persuasive Speaking in Exploring Public Speaking: The open educational resource college public speaking textbook (Edition 4.2) copyright © 2019 by Barbara Tucker, Kristin Barton, Amy Burger, Jerry Drye, Cathy Hunsicker, Amy Mendes, and Matthew LeHew licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.