Hook Story Offer
Author: Pouya Eti
Almost all the entrepreneurs are continuously searching for new ways to increase their business sales because sales are the guarantee of a flourishing business. In this class, we will dig deep into a very unique and exciting strategy, which will open new opportunities for your sales growth. This strategy consists of 3 main steps – hook, Story, and Offer.
This technique is mostly used by business owners who aim to convince their clients to take action. It may sound simple: you create a landing page, catch your client’s attention, you share a touching and engaging story of your product or business, and, finally, you come up with a good offer. In reality, this strategy is much more complicated: in this class, you will find out that each of these three parts consists of specific preferences and techniques, a lot of small steps to create a good hook, a touching story, and an irresistible offer. Knowing and implementing this structure of “hook, story, and offer” will raise your chances of having better sales and a higher conversion rate.
HOOK
In this lecture, we are talking about hooks. There are many hooks that we engage daily – in e-mails, in landing page titles, in ads, on many different platforms, but all of them, especially the good ones, have one thing in common: they create curiosity in their audience.
For example, in e-mail marketing, if you want to apply this strategy, you are mainly going to use your hook in the subject line. So whenever your audience sees the subject line of your e-mail, it hooks them by grabbing their attention. The next part is the body of the e-mail, where we introduce the story of our product or service, and then, in the end, call to action which is offer.
In this part, we are talking about creating curiosity in the subject lines of our e-mails.
An example of a hook in e-mail marketing is “Thank you”. Have you seen this subject in your inbox? “Thank you”. The second you see something like this, a question appears in your mind: For what? Why are they thanking me? What have I done? This will create curiosity, and you will open their e-mail to see what they are thanking you for. The more curious your audience gets, the better hook you have created for your campaign.
An excellent way to get good practice in this is subscribing to successful people’s mailing and following their e-mails. This way, you will learn the best way to hook your client and engage in your e-mail.
Another example of a subject line that I would like to analyze with you is the following: “Sell on Amazon with dropsh…” Usually, when you see the unfinished word and three dots, you think that the heading is too long, and there is no space in the subject line, but that’s not true. The writers do it on purpose to make you curious. If you don’t read the word entirely, your brain automatically focuses on the unfinished word to complete it, so your attention is quickly stuck to the subject line. You may think, “ok, it’s probably dropshipping. What about the dropshipping? Amazon sales without dropshipping? How is that?” And you dive into it to see what it says. That is an excellent example of a hook, which created curiosity and questions in your mind.
Now let’s take another example from my e-mail list. “Will you join us?” This example is not that good and not that bad. Why? It’s not that good because it’s calling you to take action right from the beginning. Of course, it creates some curiosity, but usually, when you speak about an action upfront, people are not ready for it. They ask themselves – join you in what? Maybe you have a product you want to sell or a webinar that I need to pay for? No, I’m going to pass. These answers will appear in the customer’s mind, so you need to be careful not to be very direct. The hook must be mysterious, it must create curiosity. In this case, it’s more or less clear and direct.
Next example. “Urgent (Possibly the coolest thing ever)…”
In this case, many questions appear in the reader’s mind: “what is so urgent? Is something going to end? Am I missing something important? What is so cool about it? You see, the reader thinks a lot about it. This is an example of a good hook.
Another example of a hook in e-mail marketing. ***Warning***Starts tomorrow. This sentence immediately grabs the reader’s attention and creates a sense of urgency. This reader will definitely open the mail to see what is so important that it starts so soon.
A good hook has to have several important features and let me name some of them.
Feature #1.
A good hook must be understandable.
Why is it so important? Most marketers create something very difficult to understand for ordinary people. Sometimes I run into some messages, some hooks that are so hard to understand. My mentor had a great rule, he called it a grandmother rule. He said whatever hook you want to create, it must be so simple and understandable that my 80-90 years old grandmother can understand. If your campaign is specific for any type of people, if it includes many advanced terms, complicated words, and expressions, then the reader may lose the point. That is definitely not what you want.
Usually, if you make your audience confused, you can never sell anything. My mentor said, – the confused mind doesn’t buy. So make sure not to make your audience confused. Make everything clear and understandable, express yourself in the most simple ways, and use simple words and notions to be understandable for all people.
Feature #2.
Make yourself short.
Some people like to speak a lot: they use long words and phrases, long sentences, and texts. I won’t suggest that, especially when writing a hook. The shorter, the better. Whatever you want to write a hook, make it the shortest possible. A good way to do that is to write a sentence, then try to remove unnecessary words and see if it loses or changes the meaning. Move out all the unnecessary words, and you will get a nice short hook.The best option for a subject line or a heading is something in between 8-15 words. I would suggest not to use more than ten words. My ideal is 5-10 words, but that depend on yourself and the situation you are in.
For example, if it is a video ad of 15 seconds, 3 seconds hook at the very beginning is a perfect start. Remember, the shorter, the better.
Case study:
There was a guy on Instagram who was creating story ads, and he was successful in selling his services, and he had a fitness program. In between the stories, I saw his story ad. You couldn’t see him at the beginning, you just could hear his voice. The interesting part is that in the first 2-3 seconds of the video, he was showing a strange scene of someone smashing eggs. It didn’t have anything to do with the weight loss exercises that he was promoting. I got to know that this was a great hook, as this strange video at the beginning makes you curious, you continue to listen, and you get into the story of his business, and at the end, he convinces you to buy his service or product. Do you see why the hook is important?
Remember! Other parts of the “hook, story, offer” strategy are also important, but if you don’t have a good hook, the rest is not that important.
Feature #3.
Create at least 1 question in the mind of your reader.
As we discussed earlier, the hook needs to create questions in the mind of the audience. That will make them go deeper into the story and get convinced to buy your product. The more questions it creates, the better sales you will have.
These are the most important features every hook needs to have.
Now, what you need to do? Every day we see many ads on Instagram and Facebook, Google, YouTube, and other platforms that try to hook our attention. Please, go to your e-mails that you had subscribed to, and try to figure out the best hooks that companies used to get your attention. Pay attention to Facebook, youtube, google, and Instagram ads, see if they manage to hook you. The best way to get better in this is to concentrate on what is happening around you and learn from it.
Our next lesson will be about the story. So if you’re ready, let’s go ahead.
STORY
Welcome to the next part. I hope you have spent some time practicing the hook, and in this lecture, we will talk about the story.
Let’s talk about the features of a story.
Feature #1.
The first feature that is a crucial element to a good story is relatability. What does it mean – relatable?
Suppose someone wrote a story, and I am the reader of it: I must relate to that story. If there are five characters in that story, I have to see myself as one of the characters; I have to see a connection between myself and them; I have to relate to the story. When you watch good movies or TV series, you can always see similarities between you and one of the characters. You see that the heroes have many characteristics that you have. So, if your story is good, most people must connect to it.
That’s why your story needs to be real. Suppose we read a story about a millionaire, who has made millions of dollars just because he was born in a millionaire’s family, healthy and smart – with a high IQ, good-looking and lucky, few people will relate to that story. But if you tell a story of a person that ten years ago didn’t have anything at all, but due to his hard work and faith and faithfulness he broke through and has made a fortune, then many people will be able to relate to that story.
On the other hand, you need to tell the truth to your reader. Some people don’t want to share their real story, because they are afraid that it will make them look bad. But it’s not true. For example, in my business of creating online educational courses on marketing and business, I have failed countless times. Those failures were not small; they were huge. And there were times when I didn’t have any money, as many of you, guys. But now I’m here after many years of learning and hard work. This is my story, and it relates to many of you.
So the story needs to be relatable; it needs to be real.
I have watched a TV series that has the worst reviews with each coming season. You can ask why were you watching them? Well, because the directors have done a great job creating an excellent hook, but the story was useless. It was unrelatable. The director wanted to show the routine of luxury people who are wealthy, who drive fantastic cars. But the thing is that you never see these people in simple life situations – in comfortable home clothes, in sleeping clothes, without makeup. They are always in perfect shape, in suits and tuxedos, with makeup, etc. These features make the story unrelatable; no one can relate to this story, which makes it a bad story. So with having a good hook, you need to have a good story, as well.
Feature #2.
Customer is the hero
The next important thing is the following. In your story, you need to make the reader feel like you are the mentor, and he/she is the hero. You have to design it this way: I will show you the way, but you are the main character of this film, of this company, of this topic, business or movie.
Sometimes people make that mistake of talking only about themselves: I am fancy, I am cool, I am rich, I am successful, and they miss the reader in the story. The reader needs to have a role in your story. I am writing this for you; I am giving examples for you, making you the story’s hero.
Let’s take the example of fast-food. How can I make myself the mentor in the fast-food business and make you the hero? I need to make clear that your emotions matter. I must focus on how you feel, not on my skills, on my knowledge or know-how. I am going to talk about your feelings, your emotions, your experience in tasting my food; this is the right attitude.
Focus on the customer, concentrate on their desires, their feelings, their needs and make them feel like they are the hero of your story.
Feature #3.
Connected to the offer
You want to drive your customers towards your offer, so your story needs to lead to the offer and connect your customers to the offer.
Don’t create a story that is going nowhere. It must end-up to the offer. When your audience is reading your text and watching your ad, finally, it must direct them to the offer.
Feature #4. The story must be understandable
This requirement is the same for the hook and the offer. Do not use complicated words and expressions in your story. Show your story a way that everybody can understand it, no matter if it is a small child or a 90 y.o. Grandmother. It is extremely important to draw your story the way that every person fully understands your message, despite their age, sex, race, social status, and profession.
Once again, practice is an essential part of learning new things. If you want to practice, pay attention to the story of every ad that you come across and try to figure out if it is good or bad, if it pushes you to the offer or if they showed you a story then directed to buy different stuff.
That was all about this lecture. I hope you find all this information useful and you are learning new things here and improving yourself. Be active, write these theses down, make notes, research about them, and this knowledge will help to grow your business and gain more from what you do.
In the next lecture, we will talk about the third part – the offer. So I am going to see you at the following lecture.
OFFER
In this part, we are going to talk about the offer. In general, this lecture is simple, but there are a couple of important things that you need to pay attention to.
Simple and clear
Your offer must be clear and understandable for the customer. Mainly, they need to understand easily:
– What are you asking them in the offer?
– What are they going to get?
These two things are crucial in making the offer.
Case study #1.
A couple of months ago, I had questions about legal stuff, and I contacted a company for consultation. What did I expect as a customer? I expected someone to send a letter with all the information they are going to provide, the amount I needed to pay, and the result that I would get. This is what I expected.
On their website, it was written “20$ for the evaluation”. So I paid to get the evaluation. After a couple of days, a salesperson called me presenting their services. They used on purpose many complicated words and expressions and doing their best to confuse me. After offering all that, they told me that it would cost me 500$. I was so confused, and I asked – in this case, for what did I pay 20$? They were using this system to confuse their customers and force them to make a purchase. In my case, I didn’t understand why I would pay 20$ or 500$ for evaluation?
I asked him to send a PDF with the presentation of their services, the final amount I needed to pay, and all the values I would get for those 500$, but he didn’t have that information. He didn’t manage to provide me with all the necessary information to make a decision. That was a catastrophe.
This method does not work. That was the last time I contacted this company.
So you need to express the things you require from your customers in a very clear way and what they will get by paying the amount you are requiring.
Jeff Bezos didn’t use this kind of method to become the wealthiest person on the planet. He didn’t make his customers confused. Learn from him; otherwise, your business will not have a long life with this kind of strategy. People won’t trust you. Word of mouth can work either for you or against you in a very crucial way.
So, be careful when you make your offer. Express clearly what you are asking your customer to do and explain what are they going to get? It must be entirely understandable and clear to them. If one of these features is not met properly, you’re going to get dissatisfied, one time customers.
Case study #2.
My brother wanted to start a business, and I gave him advice. I told him to tell his clients that they can return the product anytime in any condition, even if they use it. He said, why would I do that? I said, by doing that, you will win their trust. The customer, who doesn’t know the seller, always thinks that someone is trying to cheat him. He said, what if everyone returns and I have to pay them back: I will have no revenue then. Then I asked him the most important questions: do you believe in your product or not? If you think your product is perfect, it has high quality; it is reliable and useful, then you don’t have anything to worry about. If your product is perfect and you use this strategy, most people will buy it, even if they are not familiar with your product or you, and only some 3% will return. Yes, you will refund their money, but you will have tremendous revenue from the other 97% sales. So if you’re not sure about your product, then don’t make sales. Fix your product first, get assured in its quality, and then make the sales. Then you will have great success.
Jeff Bezos also says: “if you can provide enough information to your customers so that they can make the purchase, you will be rich. Use all the information you have: reviews, feedback, technical data, history of production, source of the idea, the geography of creation and production, methodology of production, ways of use, advantages, disadvantages. Use every informational resource that you have. If they have enough information, they can trust you, make a decision, and make the purchase.
On the other hand, whenever you get negative feedback or review from your client, don’t get offended. They give you valuable information, get those testimonials, fix your product, and don’t hesitate to talk about them in your next advertisement. These are powerful actives for your business. For example, there are some reviews about my courses; I am not perfect and can make mistakes as everyone else, and someone of you may say – this part of the course is boring, this part is not that informative, these examples are not good…. I take those negative feedbacks, fix the bugs in my classes, make them better, and relaunch them. Then I can boldly talk about that in my reviews to show my potential clients the positive changes I have made based on the negative feedback.
Remember, whatever you create, some people will not like it. You need to understand an essential difference between your product’s real quality problems and the customer’s taste.
Someone does not like spicy food. You can’t please all people; this is not a mistake about the product. It’s their taste. But when someone says the meal is burnt, then this is your problem, and you need to ameliorate the quality of your food. This is very important to understand.
Once again, please, practice these features. Try to do an exercise – take a product and try to write a good story and an attractive offer for it. If any part of the class is not clear to you, get back, take notes, practice, and you will definitely succeed.