Buzz, buzz, buzz!
I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz about “hooks” lately.
No, not fishing hooks.
And not Captain Hook.
The hook I’m talking about is that yummy piece of irresistible copy that communicates your big idea or your offer in a way that “hooks” peoples’ attention and makes them hungry for more.
Everything you offer, whether it’s a blog post, an email, a program, a service or a product, needs a hook. It needs to have what it takes to wake people up and spark their immediate, urgent interest.
And here’s the cool thing.
Your offer already has a hook. It already has something that will attract and benefit your ideal client in many ways. Your job is to identify that hook and then put it into words… words that powerfully (and even seductively) communicate the value, power, and uniqueness of your offer so it becomes irresistible to your ideal client.
So, how are you supposed to do that? How can you identify and create the copy for the hook of your offer?
That’s what today’s video tutorial is all about.
I’ve given you an easy-breezy formula for identifying and communicating the hook of anything you’ve got to offer.
Listen, there are a million different ways to write your hook once you identify it. This is just one (very easy) way to do it.
I once took a class by Ash Ambirge where she taught hook writing, and it blew my mind! Her hooks are masterful. Incredible. But learning to write them as she does… it was nearly impossible. It didn’t come naturally to me or the other people in the class.
So, my intention with this video tutorial is to give you an easy way to create a hook without feeling frustrated, confused or unsure of yourself. After all, as long as your hook is hooky enough to catch your clients’ attention, it’s done its job well.
In this video, you’ll get a basic 3-ingredient recipe for cooking up a spicy-hot hook. Once you have your hook, you can easily tweak it and turn it into a headline, title, subject line and more.
If you hate watching videos, I’ve included the transcription of the video below. Except you’ll miss the crazy musical parts of the video. And I’d hate for you to miss that.
So… watch it. Just for the fun parts.
And after you’ve watched the video, try writing your hook. Then, post it in the comments section below the video. That way, we can tweak it, come up with a few variations, or just admire it forever.
Here’s the transcript of the above video… without the fun parts.
This video gives you an easy, breezy formula for identifying and communicating your hook so you can use that hook in your headlines, titles, subtitles, and more.
If you’re not sure what a hook is, it’s a term used a lot in marketing, copywriting and even English classes to describe the words you use to communicate your big idea or your offer in a way that “hooks” people’s attention. Your hook is what gets people interested in what you have to say or what you have to offer.
[By the way, the term hook is also used by songwriters and music lovers to describe a riff or a lick or a certain pattern in a song that hooks into your brain and doesn’t let go so you end up singing it all day long.]
Your hook is often communicated in the very first words of your copy, like headlines, ledes, subject lines, etc. Those first words need to wake people up and get them to think, “Oh, I want to hear more. I’m interested in this. This is just what I’ve been thinking.”
Today, I’m giving you a 3-part formula for identifying and creating your hook. Ready? Here we go.
Ingredient Number One: One big gotta-have-it benefit that your client really wants relative to your offer. Ingredient Number Two: A slightly outrageous but believable promise or specific. Number Three is what I call a “without statement.” Now, the best way to make all of this crystal clear is for me to give you an example. Like this one:
“Attract all the clients you want in 3 months without advertising, marketing, or discounting your services.”
Let’s break it down.
The one, big, juicy, gotta-have-it benefit that these particular clients want is “attracting all the clients they want.” That’ Ingredient Number One.
Ingredient Number Two is “in the next three months or in just three months.” That ingredient sounds slightly outrageous but intriguing. It will make people think, “Really? I can attract all the clients I want in just 3 months?” It makes your promise even more intriguing.
Then… the without statement: “without advertising, marketing, or discounting your services.”
Can you see how these work together to make your hook truly hooky? “Attract all the clients I want” in and of itself isn’t all that hooky. But when you add, “in just 3 months,” and “without advertising, marketing or discounting your services,” it becomes a great hook.
Now, you can easily turn this hook into a headline or a title or something else. You’d just need to tweak it a bit.
Here are a few more examples. These examples use what I call an “even if” statement. You use the same formula but with a different statement at the end. For instance:
“Find and fall in love with your soul mate without going on Match.com, even if you’ve been searching so long you’ve given up hope.”
Note the even if statement. It stresses that this solution will work even if you’ve been searching forever and you’re starting to believe it’s going to happen.
Another example is: “How to write a hooky title for your new freebie in just 15 minutes, even if you think you’re a bad writer.”
“Even if” statements and “without” statements soothe people’s objections. They let people know this solution is going to work when nothing has worked before. They let them know they can get what they want without needing to do a bunch of stuff they hate.
Once you have your hook, you have the basic elements to create headlines, the title of your free offer, maybe even your program. You can expand upon this hook and use it as the main message of your sales page or your opt-in page.
Please know that this is just one simple way to write a hook. There are thousands and thousands of other ways, some of which are a lot more complex and creative. But this formula gives you a simple way to get to your hook and use it in your copy.