Hey there,

What do you say we talk about the weird little trick that can make our ads drink whisky, piss gasoline, and suck in orders by the gajillion?

Up for that?

Okay, so there you are: You’ve given birth to your new ad. It’s sitting on your desk, steaming with sheer potential… if you put your ear close, and strain real hard, you can actually hear the torrent of orders building in the distance.

You’ve written a hot headline that speaks to the core of your prospect, and gets them all gooey about what you’re selling…

 … you’ve got tight body copy, ready to dazzle them with the raw unadulterated benefits of the product… it shows them exactly why life would be better if they could only get one of these sexy new widgets.

You’ve loaded up on bullet points, to deliver those benefits with, well, a bullet…

 … and you’ve got a close that squeezes so tight you almost ordered the widget for yourself while you were writing it.

 So you’re about ready to turn ‘er loose and watch the marketing world erupt as your sheer genius balloons into millions of dollars in new business…

 … But Wait…

 … because you’re probably forgetting something.

Even if you’ve got all that stuff nailed down at world-class levels, there’s one last thing that could quickly and easily multiply your results (and garner you a ton of recognition in the world of direct response copy, should other writers see your ad).

What am I talking about?

A big shiny Hook. See it right there, big, barbed end, shining in the sunlight with sheer wickedness?

A decent Hook like that can take your good salesletter and turn it into a great one.

Heck, a great Hook can make even a shitty ad do a decent job of bringing in the moolah.

BUT… an alarming number of ads are left Hookless. An even more alarming number of writers wouldn’t know a Hook if it leapt out of the bushes and sank its barb into their pale, pasty jugular.

To paraphrase my friend John Carlton, a Hook is “an incongruous juxtaposition of sales elements”.

In plain terms, it’s where you connect two things that don’t seem like they should be connected, so your ad flirts with being nonsensical or controversial.

Put bluntly, the Hook is the thing that makes you do a quick double-take at the page… a real “WTF?!” moment.

The best example of this is probably this headline from one of Carlton’s famous golf ads:

“Amazing Secret Discovered By One-Legged-Golfer
Adds 50 Yards To Your Drives, Eliminates Hooks and
Slices… And Can Slash Up To 10 Strokes
From Your Game Almost Overnight”

Now, lemme ask you…

… do you honestly think there’s a golfer in the world who wouldn’t stop dead and read that headline?

Of course there isn’t.

The idea is insane. It makes no sense. One legged people don’t play golf… do they? And surely a one-legged dude is going to suck at it if he does?

The challenging of common wisdom is what makes it work.

And that’s the incongruence we talked about.

At first glance it doesn’t make sense. So they have to look again… really read it.

And then what happens?

Well, any half-serious golfer is going to want to slash ten strokes from their game overnight… so suddenly not only did the Hook drag them in, but the rest of the headline has done its job and made them read further, into the body copy… 

… And When That Does Its Job, They’ll Be Calling Our Hotline,
Credit Card In Hand, Rabid To Buy This Amazing System

Hooks like this work so well because they rely on curiosity. I have no idea whether it’s ever been proved scientifically, but Gary Halbert once said curiosity was the strongest human motivator there is.

I’m inclined to agree with him.

Ever been surfing the web and seen those little banner ads with something like “Weird Trick For Burning Belly Fat”?

Well, those ads work like crazy – you can tell because they’re everywhere, and getting ripped left right and center…

… and they work because they rely on curiosity to get people to click.

It’s the same with Hooks… if you hit it just right, you can fire up your prospects curiosity gland enough to make them stop and take notice of your ad…

… and if you’ve done your job with the rest of it, pretty soon it’ll be raining gold bars.

Okay, well maybe not quite raining gold bars, but it’ll definitely be sunshine and lollipops.

More orders, happy clients… everything a savvy freelancer wants from a job.

So where do we find a Hook?

Not everybody has a one-legged golfer, right?

No, most of us aren’t that lucky…

… but the funny thing about Hooks, is that the harder you dig to find one, the luckier you’ll often get.

It starts with the client usually. Or at least, whoever put the product together. Time to roll up your sleeves, and put on what Carlton calls your “sales detective” hat.

You need to get them on the phone, or quiz them face to face. Get into their lives, open them up and shine a flashlight in their mind. What makes them tick? Where did the product come from? Whose idea was it? Why this product? What were they doing before they did this? What happened with their last product? What makes this widget bigger/better/faster/slower/morer?

And so on, and on, and on.

(Note: whoever you’re interviewing will never know the good stuff you’re looking for, those raw nuggets of gold, so it’ll often be like butting your head against a wall. Grit your teeth and keep butting. You’ll get there.) 

2 Things Will Happen During This Process:

The first, and most obvious, is that you’ll wind up with a MUCH deeper knowledge of whatever you’re trying to sell. This is never a bad thing.

It’s quite likely that angles and benefits you never even considered will start to surface… and you can use your hard-won skills as a direct-response sales sorcerer to cast some spells and shape them into big, immediate selling points.

The second thing, is where the magic happens.

If you’re lucky, a fully formed hook will just jump out at you – the product developer had the idea for the big selling point while he was skydiving or something – but most of the time it’ll be unearthed slowly, like ancient fossil being revealed by the careful scrapings of an eager archeologist.

The big trick is to keep your eye on the prize. Ask open, probing questions that make the subject talk more than you, and run everything they say through your salesman’s filter. Is it interesting to your prospect? If not, can you spin it into something interesting?

When you find the biggest, most dramatic piece of weirdness – that thing that doesn’t fit – that’s probably where your Hook lies. Like the priest teaching people how to get out of speeding tickets, or sex secrets being revealed by a 75 year old grandmother from Nebraska.

Once you find a suitable hook, all you need to do is polish it up, and fit it into your ad. The best hooks work great in the headline… some are headlines all on their own… but others you’ll need to polish and figure out how to best serve the ad. 

And Listen Up, Because This May Be The
Biggest Piece Of The Whole Puzzle:

Sometimes there just isn’t a Hook.

Most of the time there will be… and if you don’t find it it’s likely down to you not working hard enough, or not being able to pin the guy down for whatever reason.

But sometimes, there just isn’t.

And in that case, you just go to town with your regular trickbag, and pull out all the stops.

If you’re lucky enough to have one of those killer Hooks sitting there and ready to make the whole thing sing, get it out there, loud and proud, safe in the knowledge you’re probably about to bust open a cash tornado into your merchant account.

Good luck with it.

To the blank page,

-David Raybould