By Chantal Gerardy, founder of Online Business Marketing and OBMHub, and host of The Meaningful Marketing Podcast. Last updated September 2026.
AI Summary
Most business owners think their marketing isn’t working because the offer’s wrong, the price is wrong, or they need a new website. It’s usually none of those things. Every buying decision, big or small, runs on three triggers at once, ethos, pathos and logos, the actual art of persuasion, and most marketing only ever pulls one.
In this guide I break down what those three triggers actually are, ethos, pathos and logos, in plain English rather than an English class, and why purpose-led business owners tend to overload one and starve the other two. I borrow a reframe from an unlikely source, Jennie Young’s dating book Burn the Haystack, and tie it back to something I’ve said on my own page for years, your marketing isn’t supposed to convince everyone, it’s supposed to help the right people recognise themselves in it. Then I walk through the three failure patterns I see most often, the Credential Trap, the Mission Trap and the Feature Dump, with real examples across a coach, a financial adviser, a tradie and an ecommerce brand, so this isn’t just theory for service businesses.
Then I map where all three triggers need to actually live inside your Marketing Machine™, your website, your ads, your emails and the sales conversation itself, and hand you a simple three-trigger audit to run over your own marketing this week.
This one’s for you if you know your story is good and your offer genuinely works, but you keep watching people nod along and say “this is exactly what I need” and then not buy. And it’s for your marketing manager or VA who needs a practical checklist for auditing copy and creative, not a philosophy lecture.
The Pitch That Made Sense And Still Didn’t Sell
Picture this.
A wellness coach stands up at a networking breakfast and nails her pitch. Twelve years of clinical experience. Three certifications. A slide with the exact framework and the exact number of sessions. Every single fact checks out.
Nobody in the room doubts her for a second.
Nobody books a call either.
A financial adviser gets up next with half the polish. She tells one story, a client who nearly sold the family home in a panic during a market dip, what she said to talk them off the ledge, what that house is worth to that family today. She never mentions her price.
Three people ask for her card before she’s finished her coffee.
Same room. Same audience. Same intent to spend money on the right thing. One pitch was airtight and went nowhere. The other left half the facts out and worked.
That’s not charisma. That’s the difference between talking to someone’s head and talking to the thing that actually makes them act.
Here’s the science bit, and I promise it’s worth it. Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio spent years studying patients with damage to the emotional centres of the brain. Their logic was untouched. They could reason through a problem step by step, same as anyone.
But strip out the emotional signal, and something strange happened. They couldn’t decide anything. Choosing what to have for lunch could eat up an hour.
His conclusion, laid out in Descartes’ Error, was blunt. Reasoning without feeling doesn’t produce a decision. It produces paralysis.
That’s exactly why the coach’s spotless logic went nowhere, and the adviser’s story worked. Logic tells someone a decision is defensible. It rarely tells them to actually make it. And feeling without logic doesn’t hold up once the excitement wears off either.
You need both. And you need one more thing besides.
The Three Triggers Behind Every Buying Decision
More than two thousand years before either of them stood up at that breakfast, Aristotle had already worked it out and given it a name. The art of persuasion. Not a hack, not a funnel trick, an actual field of study he mapped into three appeals. Every message that actually moves someone, a speech, a sales page, a five-second video ad, is running some mix of all three.
- Ethos, credibility. Why should this specific person believe this specific you.
- Pathos, emotion. What does this actually make them feel, and does that feeling point anywhere.
- Logos, logic. Does the case hold up once the feeling settles.
Here’s the bit that matters for you specifically. I work with purpose-led business owners. People who started their business because they actually believe in the outcome they create, not just the invoice at the end of it.
That’s a real strength. It’s also exactly why so many of you get this three-way balance wrong, in the same predictable direction, over and over.
Burn The Haystack, Don’t Search It
There’s a book that has nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with it. In Burn the Haystack, dating coach Jennie Young makes one blunt point about finding a long-term partner online. Stop hunting for the needle in a haystack of wrong-fit matches. Burn the haystack down instead, and whoever’s left standing is the one worth your time.
I’ve been saying a version of this for years, just with different props.
Your marketing isn’t supposed to convince everyone. It’s supposed to help the right people recognise themselves in your message.
A clear message does two things. It qualifies the people who think “yes, this is for me.” And it disqualifies the people who were never going to be the right fit anyway.
That’s not bad marketing. That’s meaningful marketing.
Let the tea drinkers go. The champagne drinkers? Come this way.
If you want the full story on that one, it’s an episode of The Meaningful Marketing Podcast called “If Everyone Likes Your Brand, You’re Doing It Wrong,” with Vanessa Larry Mitchell.
Ethos, pathos and logos are the fire. A specific result, stated plainly, repels the tyre-kicker who was never going to pay properly, at the same moment it convinces the right buyer. A feeling named precisely enough makes the wrong-fit reader feel nothing, and the right one feel caught out. A real price range and a real process send the bargain-hunter elsewhere before they waste your sales team’s afternoon, while the person who was always going to say yes says it faster, because nothing’s left to wonder about.
Vague marketing tries to keep everyone in the haystack a little bit interested. Sharp marketing burns most of the haystack down on purpose, because a smaller pile of the right people converts faster and cheaper than a bigger pile of the wrong ones ever will.
So that’s what the three triggers are actually for. Not persuading a stranger. Burning away the wrong ones fast enough that the right one is the only one left reading by the time they hit your call to action.
Most Purpose-Led Businesses Starve Two Of The Three
I see the same three failure patterns on repeat. Coaches, tradies, financial advisers, ecommerce brands, doesn’t matter. Each one leans hard on one trigger and quietly starves the other two. And each one looks completely reasonable from the inside, which is exactly why it’s so hard to spot in your own marketing.
The Credential Trap: All Ethos, No Feeling, No Proof It Works
This is the adviser whose entire website is a list of qualifications, memberships and years in business. It’s the tradie whose van and quote both open with “licensed and insured since 2009.” None of that is wrong. All of it is ethos.
But ethos alone answers “can I trust this person exists and is legit.” It does nothing to answer “will this actually work for someone like me,” or “do I feel anything about this at all.”
True story: a licensed electrician’s Google Business page has forty reviews, an ABN, a decade in business. All genuine ethos. Then the actual ad copy reads “licensed, insured, quality workmanship,” which could describe every other electrician in the suburb. Moves nobody.
The Mission Trap: All Pathos, No Logic Underneath It
This one’s specific to purpose-led business owners, and I see it constantly. The brand story is genuinely moving. Why they started. Who they’re here to help. The bigger change they’re part of. People read it and feel something real.
Then they go looking for the actual proof it works, a result, a number, a process, a guarantee, and there’s nothing there. The feeling has nowhere to land. So it fades by the time they close the tab.
True story: a confidence coach’s Instagram is all mission and identity. “I help women stop shrinking themselves.” Beautifully written. Genuinely felt. Gets warm DMs and zero paying clients, because nothing on the page tells a stranger what actually happens in a session, or what changes in ninety days.
The Feature Dump: All Logos, No Trust, No Feeling
This is the product page that’s all specs. The quote that’s all line items. The ad that’s a bullet list of features and a price. Common in ecommerce and trades, where the instinct is “just show them what they’re getting and let the product speak for itself.”
The product doesn’t speak. The copy around it does. And specs alone rarely move anyone who isn’t already sold.
True story: a gym equipment brand’s product listing has every spec, weight capacity, dimensions, warranty length, correctly logical. No photo of the rack actually being used. No review anywhere near the buy button. A checkout that quietly adds freight at the last step. The logic is airtight and the sale still falls over.
Ethos: Why They Should Believe You, Specifically
Ethos is more than credentials. It’s more than passion too, which is the mistake I see most in purpose-led marketing. Caring about the outcome and being credibly able to deliver it are two different questions. A buyer needs both answered before they’ll trust you with their money.
Real ethos comes from a few specific things.
- Specific results, not vague claims. “Over a thousand business owners” beats “years of experience helping people.”
- Third-party proof. Reviews, media mentions, before-and-afters, actual client names where you can use them.
- Congruence. Do you look, sound and operate like someone who actually does what you say. A beautiful mission statement next to a website that hasn’t been touched in three years undercuts itself.
- Specificity over polish. A rough video testimonial that names a real result usually out-trusts a glossy stock photo every time.
Where does it actually need to live? Your About page, obviously. But also woven through your homepage, your ads, your emails, not fenced off on one page nobody visits.
A confidence coach puts a client’s exact words underneath her own bio photo. A financial adviser lists her AFSL number and professional body membership next to an actual client outcome with a real number attached, not just the qualification sitting there on its own. A tradie’s quote includes photos from the exact suburb the prospect lives in, not stock images of a generic reno. An ecommerce brand puts its actual review count and star rating above the fold on every product page, not buried in a footer link.
Pathos: What This Actually Makes Them Feel
Pathos isn’t manipulation. And it isn’t your own enthusiasm either, which is the second mistake I see constantly in purpose-led marketing. “I’m so passionate about helping women find their voice” is a feeling you have. It isn’t a feeling your reader has. Pathos only works when it’s pointed at them, not at you.
Good pathos names the exact moment of friction your ideal client is actually in. Specific enough that they feel caught out, in a good way. Seen, rather than sold to.
This is where my Story Bridge™ approach comes in, taking a real client’s before and after and building the bridge between them, so a stranger can see themselves walking across it, instead of just being told to imagine a better future in the abstract.
Coach: instead of “transform your confidence,” name the actual 11pm moment. Lying awake rehearsing a conversation you’re too scared to have in daylight.
Financial adviser: instead of “secure your retirement,” name the quiet fear of outliving your own money. The one nobody says out loud at a dinner party.
Tradie: instead of “quality renovations,” name the actual anxiety. Being burned by a tradesman before. The ghosting. The blown deadline before a big family event.
Ecommerce: instead of “durable gym equipment,” name the specific frustration of a cheap bar bending inside six months, and the money that quietly went nowhere.
Pathos does one job. It gets someone to stop scrolling and think “that’s me.” It was never meant to close the sale on its own. That’s logos’s job, coming up next.
Logos: Does The Case Actually Hold Up
Logos is the proof that survives once the emotional response has settled and the rational brain has its say a moment later. It’s the trigger purpose-led business owners skip most often, because it can feel unglamorous next to the mission and the story.
Here’s a gut check. Baymard Institute’s research into cart abandonment found that 19% of shoppers abandon a cart because they don’t trust the site with their card details. That’s ethos failing at the exact moment logos should be closing. Forty percent abandon over costs that don’t add up once they reach checkout, freight, fees or tax appearing late. That’s logos failing outright.
The feeling got them to the cart. The logic let them go.
What logos actually looks like in your marketing:
- A clear, specific process. Not “we’ll create a custom plan,” the actual steps, in order.
- Real numbers. Timeframes, results, what’s included, what it costs, stated plainly instead of “get in touch for a quote” when you already know the answer.
- A guarantee or risk reversal, so the last logical objection has an answer before they even have to ask.
- A direct comparison. What happens if they do nothing, or go with the cheaper, less proven option.
A coach who’s built genuine pathos around her mission needs a plain-English page that says exactly what happens in week one, month one, month three. Not just “a transformational journey together.” A financial adviser needs an actual fee structure stated somewhere, not “every situation is different,” which reads as evasive even when it’s true. A tradie’s quote needs a fixed price and a start date in writing, not “we’ll confirm closer to the time.” An ecommerce brand needs shipping costs shown before checkout, not revealed at the last step, and a warranty stated in the product description, not three clicks away in a policy page.
Where The Three Triggers Live Inside Your Marketing Machine™
These three triggers aren’t a copywriting trick for one landing page. They need to show up everywhere a stranger meets your business. This is exactly why I map every piece of marketing back to the six Marketing Machine™ areas.
- Google. Ethos does the heavy lifting here first. Your review count and star rating are often the first thing a stranger judges you on, before they’ve read a word you’ve written.
- Website. All three need to be there, but logos is what’s usually missing. Mission and photos everywhere, no page that plainly states process, price range and guarantee.
- Social Media. Pathos usually dominates, and that’s fine, it’s a scroll-stopping medium. But it needs to link somewhere logos actually lives, not just another feeling-based post.
- Lead Generation. Whatever gets someone into your database needs a taste of all three, fast. A real reason to trust you. A feeling that gets them to opt in. A clear next step that makes logical sense.
- Email Marketing. This is where logos gets to do its best work over time. The actual proof, the numbers, the process, delivered patiently instead of crammed into one ad.
- Partnerships. Borrowed ethos. Someone your ideal client already trusts, vouching for you. Often the fastest of all six areas to move someone stuck between feeling interested and actually deciding.
The Three Triggers Audit
Run this over your own website, your last five social posts and your sales conversation this week. Be honest, most people are strong in one column and thin in the other two.
Ethos Check
- Is there a specific result or number within the first screen a stranger sees, not buried further down.
- Are there real reviews or client proof woven through the page, not fenced onto one testimonials tab.
- Does the site, the price and the tone actually match what you’re claiming to be.
Pathos Check
- Does your copy name the client’s actual feeling, or only your own passion for the work.
- Could your ideal client read one sentence and think “that’s exactly me,” specifically, not generically.
- Is there a before-and-after a stranger can genuinely picture themselves inside.
Logos Check
- Is there a plainly stated process, price range or timeframe somewhere a genuinely interested buyer can find it.
- Is there a guarantee, or something that removes the last risk before they commit.
- If someone printed your page and handed it to a sceptical friend, would the numbers actually hold up.
If you scored strong on one column and thin on the other two, that’s not a personality flaw. It’s just where the gap sits, and it’s the same gap I find in most audits I run.
Who Owns This On Your Team
This isn’t only a business owner’s job, and it shouldn’t be, because none of it sticks without the Six S’s Framework™ in place: Skills, Strategies, Systems, Software, Soul and Support.
The business owner sets the Soul. The actual story, the mission, the real client outcomes worth telling. That part genuinely can’t be delegated, it’s your business and your clients.
The marketing manager or VA takes that raw material and runs the Skills and the Systems, applying the three-trigger audit above across every page, ad and email on a repeat cadence, not once and forgotten. Inside OBMHub, that’s a simple recurring task, review the last month of content against the audit, flag anything that’s all pathos with no proof or all proof with no feeling, and fix it before the next campaign goes out, sitting naturally inside Wednesday’s Content Creation day in the Marketing Implementation Framework™.
Whoever’s closing the actual sale, you, a salesperson, or a booking form, needs to know which trigger a lead is missing by the time they get on a call. Someone who found you through a review is already sold on ethos, so the conversation should lean pathos and logos. Someone who came from an emotional ad already feels something, so the call should move quickly to the actual numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions About Ethos, Pathos And Logos In Marketing
What are ethos, pathos and logos in marketing?
They’re Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion, credibility, emotion and logic, adapted to marketing. Ethos is why someone should believe you specifically. Pathos is what your message makes them feel. Logos is whether the actual case holds up once that feeling settles. Every genuinely persuasive piece of marketing uses some mix of all three.
Is this the same thing as “the art of persuasion”?
Yes, exactly that. Ethos, pathos and logos together are the art of persuasion, first named and mapped by Aristotle in his work on rhetoric more than two thousand years ago. Every persuasion technique you’ve ever heard of, direct response copywriting, sales scripts, storytelling frameworks, is some version of these three appeals working together. The three-trigger audit further down this guide is just that ancient framework applied to a modern website, ad or sales call.
Which one matters most?
None of them on their own. Ethos without pathos or logos reads as a resume nobody feels anything about. Pathos without logos gets someone excited with nothing to justify the purchase. Logos without the other two is a spec sheet nobody trusted enough to read past the first line. The businesses that convert well usually aren’t better at one trigger. They’re just missing the least of the three.
Why do purpose-led business owners get this wrong more than most?
Because the instinct that makes you good at the work, genuinely caring about the outcome, tends to show up in your marketing as pathos, story and mission, while the unglamorous logical proof, the actual process, price and guarantee, feels like it cheapens the message. It doesn’t. It’s what lets the feeling turn into a decision.
How do I add logos without sounding cold or salesy?
State the specific, plain facts your ideal client already wants to know, price range, process, timeframe, guarantee, in the same warm voice you use for the rest of your content. Logos isn’t a different tone. It’s the same voice, saying the actual number instead of talking around it.
Does this apply to organic social media too, or just sales pages?
It applies everywhere a stranger forms an opinion about you, which now includes AI tools. When someone asks ChatGPT or an AI Overview about a business like yours, it’s pulling from the same signals, genuine reviews, clear proof, specific claims, that ethos and logos are built from. Vague, feeling-only content is as hard for an AI tool to recommend as it is for a sceptical human to trust.
How do I know which trigger my own marketing is missing?
Run the three-trigger audit above over your homepage, your last five social posts and your actual sales conversation. Most people are strong in exactly one column. Whichever column you struggle to fill in honestly is the one costing you sales right now.
Key Takeaways
Every buying decision runs on three triggers at once, ethos, pathos and logos, and most marketing only pulls one of them.
Purpose-led business owners tend to overload pathos, the mission and the story, and starve logos, the actual proof it works.
Ethos is more than credentials or passion. It’s specific results, third-party proof and congruence between what you say and what a stranger actually sees.
Pathos has to name the client’s exact feeling, not the business owner’s enthusiasm for the work.
Logos is the trigger most often missing, and it’s usually the cheapest one to fix, a plain process, a real price range, a guarantee.
Baymard’s research found 19% of shoppers abandon a cart over trust and 40% over costs that don’t add up, ethos and logos failing at the exact moment of decision.
All three need to live across every one of the six Marketing Machine™ areas, not just on one landing page.
The business owner owns the Soul, the story worth telling. The marketing manager or VA owns the Skills and Systems that check it’s actually there every week.
Your marketing isn’t supposed to convince everyone. Let the tea drinkers go. The champagne drinkers will find you faster once the wrong ones stop crowding the message.
Would a total stranger reading your homepage believe you, feel something specific, and be able to state your process and price back to you? If any one of those three is no, that’s exactly where the sale is falling over.
Ready to Find the Trigger Your Marketing Is Missing?
Most businesses don’t need a rebrand or a better offer. They need to know which of these three levers they’re not pulling. That’s exactly what the Marketing Gap Quiz was built to show you, which of the six Marketing Machine™ areas is actually thin, and why.
Or, if you’d rather walk through your actual website, ads and emails against the three-trigger audit together and fix what’s missing, book a strategy call and let’s find it properly.
Book a Marketing Strategy Call
Because a good story was never the finish line. The finish line is a stranger who believes you, feels something specific, and can see exactly why the numbers make sense, without you standing there explaining it to them personally.
About the Author
Chantal Gerardy is the founder of Online Business Marketing and OBMHub, and the host of The Meaningful Marketing Podcast. She works with purpose-led business owners and their marketing teams to build marketing that’s meaningful, profitable and easy to manage.
