Are you using “hooks” in your marketing?

A hook is a musical idea, often a short riff, passage, or phrase, that is used in popular music to make a song appealing and to “catch the ear of the listener”.  Online Wiki

Similar to music, your marketing can also have  hooks. This is often evident in the headline, where you are making a direct appeal to the prospect.

Where to find good hooks

You typically find a hook in the headline. Your headline is the first thing your prospect or client sees. It can be the title of a book, the subject line of an email, the tagline of an advertisement, or the headline and sub-headlines of a sales letter.

One of the best places to find good examples of hooks is at your local bookstore. Take a walk over to the magazine section and take a look at the covers of women’s magazines, celebrity magazines and fitness magazines. In addition to the title of the magazine you will see an indication of the contents of the magazines.

The magazine publisher knows that they have just a few seconds to grab your attention and to “hook” you into picking up the magazine before you walk away. That is why you see titles like”

• Seven sure fire things you must do to get _____.
• How a _____ found ______ with _______.
• Discover your inner _____, in _____ minutes or less.
• What was ______ doing with _______?
• If you want to please _____, never do _____.
• _____’s, top ten secrets for ______.

You might think this seems silly. That no one would fall for this. Well, they do, I do, and you do.  That is why they do this, because it works.

Good headlines, sub headlines and taglines are designed to pull you into a relationship with the service provider or product. Take the example of supermarket tabloids.

No matter what you may think of them, tabloids have great hooks on their covers. Although you may never admit to reading them, most people at least glance at the covers and may even pick them up while they are standing in line.

How to use hooks with prospects

Your prospect or client wants the benefit of the products or services that you are offering. So you should try to include a self-serving benefit for your client or prospect in your hook.

Example:

• Discover how current clients save an average of ____% while using ______ (product or service).
• Free Whitepaper! Top ____ things that will move your ____ forward in _____.

Using A Hook In Your Offer

Hooks grab attention. Ideally you want to keep your prospects attention during the entire marketing process. Ideally, you need to hook your prospects at a minimum of two points. At the opening of the pitch, and at the close of the pitch.

The pitch can be a salesletter, an email, a face to face sales call, a phone call, an advertisement, a book cover, etc.

You want to grab their attention at the opening. This gets them into the process. You must have their attention at the close to either seal the deal, or keep them in the sales process and move it forward.

People are skeptical. They are afraid of being taken advantage of and they are constantly asking themselves, “What is in it for me?”. Remember, your prospect has a problem that needs solving, so your hook if possible should be relevant to their needs.

Your opening and closing hook must communicate what is in it for your prospect. It should provide a tangible benefit to your client or prospect. If it is a quantifiable benefit that you can place a dollar value on, all the better. Basically, it needs to hit a hot button.

Using Quantifiable Hooks

Your prospect in answering the question, “What’s in it for me” is trying to determine and assign a value to your offering.

A simple example is the “Buy One, Get One Free” offer you see at many retail outlets and restaurants. This offer is a hook that grabs your attention, especially if you are in the market for their product or service.

You can assign a quantifiable value to what you are getting for free. Typically it is the same dollar value or less than your primary purchase

Another example is when you see an X% off offer. You can quantify what you are saving.

You can use bonuses, discounts, freebies, extra consultations whatever is appealing to your prospect or client as a hook. In many cases your prospect won’t only buy what you are hooking them with, they will buy something else.

This can be a way to increase the value of the transaction by conducting a cross-sell or up-sell to other products and services.

Key Takeways

1. Use in hooks in your marketing to grab your prospects attention.
2. Hooks should be included at a minimum in the opening and close of your marketing process.
3. You can find good examples of hooks at the newstand.
4. Your hooks should be relevant and provide a benefit to your prospect or client.
5. You should make your hooks quantifiable wherever possible.

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