This document provides 8 insights for finding an effective hook to capture attention in marketing and advertising copy. The insights include digging deeper to uncover what customers wanted before life got complicated, identifying the target market's main motivation or problem, finding unique aspects of the product that align with motivations, having open-ended discussions with clients to reveal hot buttons, learning surprising details on product history or operations, highlighting any new or exclusive information, and challenging commonly held beliefs. Following these insights can help writers develop compelling hooks to engage prospects.

1. Nail Your Next Marketing or Ad Campaign
Use These 8 Hook-mining Insights
That Successful Direct Response Copywriters Apply
By: Stacey Mathis Copywriting ©2012

2. How?

3. By using hooks
to captivate your prospects

4. Hooks emotionally grab the attention and capture the
imagination of your ideal prospect.

5. The challenge is
finding the
hook.
It’s usually
hidden and
has to be
dug up.

6. The following 8 insights will put you
on the road to delivering the words
your clients need to get their
customers to take some desired form
of action.

7. 1. What did your client’s customers want before life got
complicated?
Your hook is in there somewhere. Ignite the
customer’s imagination.

8. 2. Unmask your target market’s motivation and
demonstrate why your client’s product or service
will help them.
Line up your copy so it achieves the exact objective.

9. 3. What’s the most pressing, urgent problem your
target market has?
Use that problem throughout the copy. Position your
client as the logical choice to eliminate their crisis.

10. 4. Find a sliver of information that really does
separate your client from its competition but
lines up with your customer’s motivations.

11. 5. Have a conversation with your client. Ask him or her
open-ended questions about the product, about their
brand, about their concerns and about themselves.
Hot buttons have a way of revealing themselves this way.

12. 6. Stumble upon that shocker, that provocative piece of
information that arouses you.
Have your client show you the
ropes of the business. Take a tour
of the plant, the production room,
the cutting floor, the back office,
the showroom, the factory -
anywhere behind the scenes. Get
the history of the product, its
evolution and how it came to be
what it is now.
. . . And there’s your hook.

13. 7. Got something newsy about the service or product.
Trot it on out.
Hooks abound in “the scoop.”

14. 8. Take a commonly-held “truth” and challenge it, like
“Achieve Enormous Success Without Effort.”

15. For more compelling copywriting tips, stop by and see me at Stacey Mathis Copywriting or call (800) 862-0361.
Stacey Mathis Copywriting
www.staceythewriter.com
244 Fifth Avenue, Suite S 208
New York, New York 10002
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