- Ethos — an appeal to the authority or credibility of the presenter (in this case the business)
- Logos — a logical appeal using facts and figures to support a claim
- Pathos — an appeal to the audience’s emotions

The Dilemma of Demand Generation and B2B Leads
The modus operandi of demand generation marketers is to increase conversion rates and hit lead generation numbers. As a result, we discuss our jobs in mechanical terms, like “driving traffic to landing pages” and “getting lists ready for email campaigns.” We refer to the people we’re trying to persuade as “B2B leads.” This language creates social distance, a scientific term that describes a cultural disparity between individuals and groups. ALSO READ: The Art of Demand Generation vs The Science of Lead Generation Tasked with improving numbers on a spreadsheet, marketers become divorced from their audience, and we delude ourselves into thinking we know what they want. This is reflected in the flood of logos and ethos-backed marketing, while research consistently emphasizes the pervasiveness of emotions in our decision making — even in B2B buying groups.
Rediscovering Empathy
If demand generation is flawed, how do we change it? Begin by making the case for exploring the psyche of your customer. It’s actually a simple argument to make with a little bit of logos. Customer experience can be the key differentiator among close competitors, and with its ever-expanding reach, marketing is the perfect repository of customer knowledge. The better researched those interactions, the higher the chance of success.Use Direct Quotes
Once you have leave to do some research, start by investing heavily in your personas. The quantitative side of personas can be useful, but it’s really the qualitative data you want. Direct quotes are excellent tools for encouraging empathy. As we read someone’s honest feedback, it’s significantly easier to understand and identify with them. If you ask the right questions, there shouldn’t be much ambiguity in people’s responses. Ask them what you want to know, and they’ll tell you.Appeal to Emotion
After you have direct quotes that attribute real emotions to your audience, you can use that information throughout the customer experience — from advertising campaigns that attract interest to the email campaigns that help grow that interest into intent. Speaking to their audience on an emotional level is something Slack does brilliantly in their advertising. The company’s video spot doesn’t rely solely on logic to sell their product; instead, the campaign shows how cute animals (emotional cue) use Slack to work together and build an incredible product (emotional cue). In this campaign, Slack appeals directly to the emotional needs of the audience. Everyone wants to accomplish something important at their job — to feel like they have meaning — so Slack positions their product as a gateway to achieving that feeling. A narrower application of this strategy can also be found in the company’s banner ads. Instead of talking about features or pricing, Slack connects its product with a feeling.
*
Persuasion is a complicated art, and pathos isn’t the only way to successfully convince people. Aristotle identified three rhetorical devices, not just one. But marketers need to guard against losing touch with the powerful emotional cues that drive people to make decisions.