Persuasive Writing vs. Creative Writing
Write to sell or write to be read
“Persuasive writing” is the euphemism used for “commercial writing” or to Sanitize the widespread English term ” copywriting. ” And it would consist, according to San Google, of “the ability or ‘art’ to write commercial texts that generate results for a business, whether through sales, registrations, clicks or comments.” This, in turn, is the euphemistic way of saying: “write to sell.”
We all buy (food, objects, services, entertainment, love…) and we all sell (even if it’s just our time). However, selling is very frowned upon, perhaps because in this area there has been such a high degree of extortion and deception that, in general, we are quite alert so that they do not sell us – through bad tricks – something that we do not want to buy.
My marketing mentor, Laura Ribs, always says: “If you don’t want to sell, don’t try to have a business.
Those of us who are dedicated to providing services that we consider of interest to other people and intend to make a living from it, have no choice but to make our way in a hyper saturated market, and try to get people who do not know us and who are potentially interested in know about us what we do, get an idea of what we can contribute and trust in our honesty. That is, we have no choice but to “sell.” My marketing mentor, Laura Ribs, always says: “If you don’t want to sell, don’t try to have a business.”
From my experience and that of many fellow entrepreneurs, I believe that it can be sold without deceiving anyone, although I am the first who has had great difficulties in learning how to do it. I myself have so many prejudices about selling and so many patterns against making myself visible in the market, that it is almost a miracle that I can make a living from what I like to do most, and sometimes I still feel guilty about it.
Persuasive writing is a key factor in this process of making yourself known and gaining people’s trust. In my experience, the most persuasive of all writing is creative writing.
Persuasive writing is clearly a key factor in this process of making yourself known and gaining people’s trust. And, in my experience, the most persuasive of all writing is creative writing. If you master creative writing, you will not have any problem selling in writing, because you will be used to writing always taking into account the reader’s point of view. In reality, the key is – in both types of writing – to get yourself out of the way, to give the greatest importance to the person who receives you, to make things easier for them and to make them feel – while reading you – comfortable, respected and cared for in your needs.
Let’s now look at some of the keys to persuasive writing, and we will compare them as we go with those of creative writing.
1. Repetition
We could say that the key to this tool would be to repeat things without being repetitive. Nobody likes things repeated to them, but the truth is that we tend to be very distracted and, if they don’t repeat them to us, we forget them almost instantly. So saying the same things in different ways in writing would be one of the qualities of every good salesperson.
Think about your favorite songs. What do you remember? Possibly from the chorus. Because? Well because it repeats itself. As for creative writing, repetition is also essential: a character or several with certain traits that are shown over and over again, objects that appear many times throughout the narrative, a few places that end up becoming familiar. for the reader by repeating them, a message that is always the same, although the scenes and events through which it is transmitted vary…
In fact, repetition is the key for things to be stored in our memory. And narrative is responsible for repeating (over the centuries) the important things in life so that we remember them and make us evolve.
2. Inclusion of data and statistics
One of the ways to reinforce your message through persuasive writing is to provide objective data and benefits that you can demonstrate.
This, in autobiography writing, we would obtain through concreteness. Specific things happen to a specific character, in specific places and over a specific time. What better way to demonstrate what you want? The reader will be immersed in an experience through all that concreteness, and that experience is irrefutable. All those specific data may not be real, but the experience is, and also the experiential truth that underlies every narrative, and that is what matters.
3. Provide the solution to a problem
Many of the things we buy (and sell) have to do with solving something we don’t want in our lives. So in persuasive writing it is important to show that pain point and put the Band-Aid on the reader through what we offer.
In creative writing this would be represented by the character’s conflict. In any narrative it is essential that the character has a human conflict (with which any reader can identify), and that this progresses throughout the story until it is resolved, producing a vital change in the character. Isn’t this persuasion in its purest form?
4. Authority and social proof
In persuasive writing it is important to offer testimonials from people or entities that have obtained benefits from the product or service we sell, so that those who read us can see things from the point of view of those who have already purchased and are satisfied with the result.
In creative writing, authority is provided by the narrative voice (which attests, in some way, that what is being told is true, or—what is the same thing—that it points to a truth that goes beyond what it says. narrated whether real or not), and the social proof is given by the characters themselves, who are living testimonies of the message that is intended to be transmitted.
5. Commitment and reciprocity
Human beings are grateful and generous by nature, and if through persuasive writing you highlight your commitment to the client and offer them more than what, in principle, they would expect, they will feel grateful and, therefore, inclined. to return the favor by buying what you offer.
In creative writing, this would translate into putting everything on the table, emotionally speaking. If you offer yourself completely in your stories, the reader will appreciate it and will give you back what every writer is – deep down – looking for: his heart.
6. Empathy
In persuasive writing, the more you empathize with your reader, the more he or she will empathize with you and your products or services. And the more you navel-gazing, the fewer results you’ll get. Many people think that selling is about talking about how wonderful their products or services are, when what is truly effective is that they put the focus on those they are addressing, that they talk to them about things that they know, about problems that they are dealing with. they feel identified, of real solutions to those problems, and with a language that is familiar and close to them.
In creative writing, empathy is also absolutely essential, and is applied through characters. As a writer you have to empathize with your characters so that the reader, in turn, empathizes with them. In reality, it would be about something more than empathy, it would be more about identification or, as José Luis Samper called it, “transubstantiation.” You become your characters, and the reader does the same. If you are not capable of feeling compassion and being understanding with your characters, everything will go to hell; The reader will notice it right away and will not be able to get into the story you are telling them. Result: he will stop reading you.
7. Get ahead of objections
The worst thing that can happen when you use persuasive writing is that your reader is left thinking, “Yes, but…”. We all, in fact, love to object, especially if money is involved. So you have to get ahead of that, and make your reader see in your texts that you know their possible objections, and that you know how to solve them. This will make him feel understood and cared for in his needs.
In creative writing we also have to anticipate the reader’s possible objections, especially regarding the plausibility of our stories. What we tell does not have to have happened in reality, but it has to seem like it. In any case, in this type of writing we have an advantage, and that is that objections can only be raised on a mental level, through thought and argument, and when we write stories, our objective is to have the reader permanently in the experience, and not in the intellect.
In the field of experience, of action, of what happens, there is no possibility of objecting. The action is irrefutable. No one would think of objecting to Don Quixote or Madame Bovary. So, what someone who writes fiction has to take care of is not to start philosophizing or explaining their message explicitly, because then they run the risk of their reader starting to use their intellect and, therefore, to refute what is said. He tells.
Storytelling: narrating your own experiences, or the experiences of your clients, and especially if you appear human and vulnerable, will make the reader connect emotionally with you and accompany you wherever you want to take them.
8. Storytelling
And this is where persuasive writing and creative writing come to definitively merge. Storytelling is, as the translation of the term itself indicates, “telling stories.” As I said at the beginning, there is no writing more persuasive than creative Ghostwriters For Hire. Narrating your own experiences, or the experiences of your clients, and especially if you appear human and vulnerable, will make the reader connect emotionally with you and accompany you wherever you want to take them, as long as you do not break the implicit pact of honesty.
About five or six years ago I was in Marrakech with my two children, Elmo and Ari, who at that time must have been ten and eleven years old. It was the first time I visited Morocco and I went with great caution, because they had told me countless times about the instigations I would suffer on the street from vendors, about the care I had to take to not end up in the back room of some store buying a rug or any other item I didn’t need.
So you can imagine how wide my eyes were the first day we went to the souk, that conglomerate of very narrow streets where, like the casinos in Las Vegas or the Corte Ingles in Madrid, it is very easy to enter, but impossible to find the exit. I remember that Elmo and Ari each grabbed my arm tightly to protect me, like two fierce bodyguards. In reality, the three of us were scared to death. But there we bravely entered into the inextricable hubbub of the souk.
The mixture of stimuli for our senses made us quickly fall into a kind of spell, as if we were in a dream: the smell of incense, leather, soaps, sweat, oils, raw meat, tea, spices, kebab, perfumes…; the color of the fabrics, the shine in the eyes of the people we passed, the glow of the teapots; the inevitable friction of the crowd, which carried us in a tide; the beeps, the screams, the complaints, the laughter… Everything was so unapproachable, exaggerated and different from boring Madrid… that there was no choice but to open up and let yourself be transfixed by it.
As alert as I was, I began to experience a sensation completely opposite to alert, something like total surrender. Everything there was full of life, while Madrid resembled, in my memory, a gray and inert wasteland. A part of me that was totally related to everything that moved there was awakened. I saw sincere smiles, serene eyes, deep looks, expressions of innocent joy. An innocence that was impossible for me to recognize in the adults who surrounded me in my country. It was as if I had much more in common with those people, even if I didn’t understand their language, than with those who I shared culture and language.
Almost without realizing it, my children and I began to relax. We stopped in stores, asked questions, laughed. We understood each other with people, no words were needed. There was something much more instinctive and natural that united us. At one of the stalls I started talking to a guy who spoke broken Spanish. He must have been about thirty years old and he was very handsome, with eyes like hazelnuts that made him want to stay and live. In the store they sold soaps, teas and a lot of other things that smelled heavenly. The boy was charming and exuded joy. He told me about his family, he was interested in mine, he told me how beautiful my children were, and he invited me to tea.
Elmo, Ari and I went into the store. I drank the most delicious tea I have ever tasted in my life, together with the boy and his father, whom he introduced us to, and who was sitting on a stool, sipping from a hookah while he smiled at us with his eyes and his thousands of wrinkles. We continue talking, I don’t know what, but what I do know is that it was pure life, and that when we finished the tea I felt such deep gratitude that I bought some soaps, three boxes of teas of different flavors, a bag with some balls. I don’t know what but it was essential – apparently – that I put them among the clothes in my closet… We left there with a smile from ear to ear and a small bag full of superfluous things.
I didn’t realize it until after a while. I stopped my children in the middle of the street and told them: “They just did it to us!” “What, mom?” they asked me, surprised. “Well, that’s what they had warned me about so many times,” I answered, and we continued walking, while I felt quite confused and confused. Then I recalled—with my heart—everything that had just happened, leaving my intellect aside. I stood again in the middle of the street, and I said to my children: “But, you know what? That he has earned it. I had learned more about how to sell in half an hour with that guy than in all my marketing courses.
If you’ve gotten this far, it means that storytelling has worked ;-). And, as you see, selling is not that different from telling stories, or from life itself. We are all very similar. We all like to be treated well, to tell us how beautiful our children are, to be happy and open-minded with us, to invite us to tea, to open the door of their house for us, to tell us about their life. and introduce us to their family… Who can resist that? I certainly don’t, nor do I want to. I can’t think of any objection, honestly, because the heart takes precedence over the intellect. And I have to confess that I still keep those balls in the closet, even though they no longer smell like anything and I don’t even know what they were for.
