Why Creating an Effective Hook May Be the Most Important Thing You Do

This is your competition

In 1970, 500 ads were seen by the average American per day; today it’s between 4,000 and 10,000 ads per day.

The first time people learn or hear about your is typically on social media, where there are 147,000 photos uploaded, 54,000 shared links, and 317,000 status updates on Facebook every minute; more than 95 million posts shared on Instagram every day; and one billion hours of content watched on YouTube daily.

That is what you have to compete with if you want to get people's attention and why knowing how to write a good hook is one of the, if not the most important things you can do in your marketing.

A good hook has the job of reeling in a prospect by getting their attention enough to take the next step.

Facebook has started counting "video views" at 3 seconds in their advertising.

FB video product manager Matt Pakes believes that three seconds indicates a person’s intent to watch a video, saying, “If you’ve stayed on a video for at least three seconds, it signals to us that you are not simply scrolling through [the] feed.”

We can use that as a good benchmark for what we need to accomplish.

Setting the Groundwork for Creating Your Hook

“When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire.” — David Ogilvy

Brandan Kane, author of Hook Point and One Million Followers defines a hook as something that can be comprised of text (e.g., a phrase, title, or piece of copy), an insight (from statistics or a professional’s point of view, a philosophy, or a person’s thought), a concept/idea or a format (e.g., an image or video), a personality or performance (e.g., music, sports, acting, or a cadence), a product/service, or a combination of some or all of these elements.

This is different than "clickbait" which is something that deceives readers in an attempt to click. Whatever you come up with you need to make sure it is validated in your content or you will lose the trust of your audience right off the bat. When in doubt, lead with value, empathy and trust.

The first thing I think about when I am writing my hook is:

1. How can I solve my audience's specific pain point or problem. You want to get specific and write your solution out on the top of your paper to make sure everything leads to that. Specificity is key because without it, you will just blend in with the 60,000,000 other messages being broadcast every day.
2. What is an outcome my audience has been trying to find but hasn't. One of my favorite quotes on this is from "Great Leads" (a must read and super cheap on Kindle vs Hardcover).
3. “The only reason any rational human being ever purchases anything is to derive a benefit from it! That means … any scrap of sales copy that fails to clearly, dramatically, emphatically, credibly, and repeatedly present the benefits a product will deliver is destined to fail miserably.” In other words, if you have any hope of getting your reader by the lapels and making him listen to your message, you first have to give him a reason why. And, that reason is bound up in a promise he cannot resist.

Now that you have your base for creating your hook, here are a few guidelines:

“What marketers sell is hope.” — Seth Godin

• This should go without saying but keep it consistent with your brand. If it comes out of left field people will be confused and probably not click
• Deliver the unexpected. Is there are certain type of messaging that people in your niche are used to seeing? Try and do the opposite
• Uses as few words as possible - think a book cover or the subtitle to that book
• Don’t make people think very hard...but also not too little. You want to keep it easy to understand but also it needs to stimulate them some otherwise straight to the junk pile
• When in doubt, use curiosity. You never want to give away the solution in your hook
• If you have seen it somewhere else, don't use it. Legendary copywriter Eugene Schwartz hates templates because people think if it is used in one place it can be used everyone. Every audience is different
• Combines a common/relatable element with something that is unique, and that draws your audience in
• Don't try to sell to everybody. We can have a whole lesson on the "Five Levels of Awareness" but if you aren't familiar I would Google that + Eugene Schwartz

Ways to come up with hooks

• What is keeping your audience up at night: Marketer and psychological teacher Wyatt Woodsmall says that if you describe people’s problems better than they can, they’ll subconsciously believe that you have the solution
• If/Then formula: Point out your prospects’ problems or needs after the if, and use your product as the solution to their problems after the then. For example, if you have a product that helps people with the serve in tennis, you could use this formula: “If you’re looking to increase the amount of top spin on your serve, then this video will be one of the best things you can do for your game.”
• Flip a problem on it's head: Marketer Brandon Lucero calls these "Thought Reversals". What is one thing that has been accepted in your industry as common practice that you can prove to be wrong. For him it is "How to videos are what is keeping you from growing as a content creator"
• Lead with a threat, warning or pain: We all do things to either avoid pain or gain pleasure but it turns out that we will do a whole lot more to avoid pain than gain pleasure. From Sean D'Souza in The Brain Audit. "Problems activate our Brains. The problem gets our instant attention. This is because our brain is always on the lookout for the problem. While solutions may or may not engage the brain, a problem always gets the brain's attention".
• Did you know hook: Present surprising facts/statistics/numbers about your niche. Ex: "Did you know that the average marketer checks his phone 96% of the day he isn't sleeping? (Although it may seem like it, I just made that up don't use it)
• Social Proof to induce FOMO: Give people the feeling of "all these other successful people are using this, should I be?"

Fishing for Hooks

Every marketer, artist, or business person needs to have a swipe file. A place where you collect inspiring pieces of content to pull inspiration from. Check out swipe.co or swipefile.com for examples. Some places you can pull content specifically for hooks are*:

• Book titles
• Social content
• Meme cards (text caption boxes that appear at the top or bottom of a video on Facebook or Instagram—they’re explained more in depth in the next chapter)
• Headlines
• Concepts
• Launch campaigns Article headlines TV commercials Social media ads (use the Facebook Ad Library to search for ads here: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/)
• Print ads (billboards, magazine covers)

*Source Brendan Kane