Online marketing can be a tough business. The level of competition you’re facing is usually extremely high, and the attention span of the Internet audience is extremely limited. You want to maximize the impact you have in the short span of time that you have a website visitor’s attention. One way you can do this is by using sound psychological principles to craft your content for greater effectiveness.

Use language that engages all five of a reader’s senses. This is an attention-holding technique. Whether or not they are conscious of doing it, readers will devote extra mental energy to thinking about and imagining any sensation they are presented with. By making use of every sense, you can increase the amount of imagination the reader is using, and this means they will be paying more attention to your content whether they want to or not.

Sprinkle your content with rhetorical questions. These questions are far more powerful than you might think. A sentence like, “wouldn’t you like to save fifty percent on the next power tool you buy?” isn’t just marketing copy. It has a subconscious effect on readers. They will be composing answers to such questions whether or not they’re aware of it. While this might reduce attention in the short term, (avoid placing particularly important information immediately after rhetorical questions) it will draw them into the piece they’re reading and make them more likely to finish it.

Your overall writing style should be relentlessly positive. Go out of your way to avoid making negative statements. Even negative facts that are positive in nature should be phrased to avoid negativity. (e.g. use “keeps your kitchen spotlessly clean” instead of “creates no mess.”) Building up a positive feeling in your readers is tremendously important, and you don’t want to use a single word that doesn’t contribute to that effort.

Part of the reason you need all of that positivity is because your content needs to have a call to action. There should be no doubt in the readers’ minds about what they should do next after reading your work. You can be explicit and unambiguous about what action you want your readers to take without getting pushy or giving them the hard sell. In many cases, the most effective call to action is simply one that invites readers to learn more – and take in more of your persuasive content.

Finally, you’ll find that readers connect better with an individual than a faceless authorial voice. This makes it a good idea to infuse your content with as much of your personality as possible. If you feel comfortable writing a direct testimonial or anecdote, you should by all means do so. Even if such styles do not suit your purposes, you can still let your own, distinctive voice come through. Allowing your readers to build up a mental picture of you will encourage trust and keep them reading.

While psychology has a large and complex role to play in the field of marketing, the suggestions presented above will allow you to put psychological principles to work in your marketing content immediately. If you like the results they achieve, you can go on to learn about many other psychological tactics that will bring you further success.