The following excerpt is from Perry Marshall, Keith Krance and Thomas Meloche’s book Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | IndieBound A hook is the front-facing message that your would-be customers see prior to becoming customers. It’s the thing that intrigues them and reels them in. It’s the primary reason why people want to take you up on your offer.
That first line that’s the prospects’ first point of contact with you has to be so knock-their-socks-off good that they feel compelled to read all the way to the end. At that point, they do what you ask next in your call to action, namely, give up their contact information (become a lead) or plunk down their credit card and buy (become a customer).
How to find the right hook
First and foremost, to write a good hook for your product or service, you must first identify your target market. For established businesses, this is fairly straightforward and can be answered in one question: Who are my customers?
We also ask ourselves an alternate question, which is “Who is our most valuable customer?” Your most valuable customer is usually your best customer. Your best customers are people that you’ll actually pay more to acquire. They become your best customers because they spend far more and generate the highest number of referrals.
Once you’ve answered these questions, your next job is to figure out what they want the most. What are their pain points, what are their fears? Then identify an easy-to-implement solution that you provide in your product portfolio that will immediately solve that problem or fulfill that desire.
The reason why it’s so important to identify your ideal customers is that a hook has to be highly specific. The more specific your hook is to your audience, the better. You’re going to have a very hard time selling a “Learn to play like Eddie Van Halen” guitar product to someone who wants to learn how to play classical guitar. But, put a “Learn to play Eddie Van Halen’s Top 10 Guitar Licks” message in front of a guitarist who loves to play hard rock guitar, and you probably have a pretty good hook.
Move toward…
