4 Ways to Hook Your Prospects in Less Than 15 Minutes!

In journalism and news writing, writing a catchy lead or headline is the most crucial part of the job. To compel readers to take a look at your story, you need to write a catchy lead to pique their curiosity first. Now the trick here is to make sure that your lead is short but sweet – it has to encapsulate the gist of your story, and you have to be creative at crafting it!

Your story contains information and facts. However, if your lead is just a conundrum of all those facts, people wouldn’t really care to read it. Writing the lead or headline is not simply about regurgitating the facts, but it is about figuring out the point! You have to craft your lead to make it sound like your reader has to care enough and click/read through your story. 

You have around 10 seconds to capture the attention of your audience. You have to make your lead short, catchy and understandable. It’s not an easy task. In fact, legendary copywriter Eugene Schwarz was known to draft the first 50 words of his sales letter in over a week! 

That entails lots of rewriting or revisioning – and all because he wants to make sure that the readers are compelled to read throughout the end of the copy. Writing a catchy lead has become more important now in the digital era. 

People just browse or skim through Social Media feeds and online news. Attention spans have shortened. There are lots of ads and viral posts that are competing for attention. How do you make yours stand out?

Fortunately, there is a formula to ensure that your leads are catchy and interesting enough for readers to take notice. You need to apply this when you create emails, blog posts, and even Social Media posts! So below is a cheat sheet on how to hook your prospect readers with a short but sweet headline:

Make it controversial.

Whether we like it or not, people are more hooked when you open up with a polarizing statement. Expressing a strong opinion will generally garner more reactions, and identifying an enemy will make you more relatable to your readers. 

People naturally like to group themselves, and most of them will go to lengths to defend their own tribe. Each group has an enemy – it could a person, group, or even an abstract thing (like concepts and principles). 

However, you don’t have to be necessarily negative or aggressive. You can challenge opinions and perceptions without stooping down to low-level arguments and ad hominems. The important thing here is that you can show that you understand their point of view and you can lead and stand up against the opposing side. 

Some of the most popular topics that are highly polarizing are, of course, politics and social issues such as gender and racial discrimination. However, when it comes to business, there are lots of topics that you can pick too.

You can challenge prevailing business trends and practices like saying that SEO is dead or Content Marketing does not work. Of course, you have to actually back up your controversial lead with facts and information. Make sure your content actually delivers quality information, and not just use leads/headlines that are considered clickbait.

Open up with a question.

Questions elicit a response, and that’s why they are also effective leads. However, you have to tread carefully. Questions that simply elicit a yes or no answer is not what we are talking about here. In fact, you should avoid that. 

You also have to avoid condescending and negative questions, because it might turn off potential readers. What you should do instead is to either ask how-to and insight questions. A how-to question is common, especially in networking. In prospecting, you can always open up with a lead like, “Want to know how I turned $50 to $150,000 in a month?” Your prospects will surely be interested in what’s next, because who does not want to earn big money in a short time, right?

An insight question usually opens up with a fact or statistic. “20% of online sales come from emails – how does this affect your business?” That is an example of an insight question, and it will most likely make your readers think about their current business model and sales strategies.

Cite an interesting statistic.

As mentioned above, citing a statistic is effective when you follow it up with a question. However, you can also cite a shocking or controversial statistic (if you can) on its own. For the most part, however, citing a statistic is not enough. It is best to follow that up with a question or initiate a controversy. 

For example, you can challenge a recent study that says you need 10,000 hours to master a certain skill. Of course, you can either say that the number is too high – or that mastering skills have no time limit. Again, if you will use a statistic on your lead, make sure it is followed with a question or a controversial statement.

Tell stories.

People love to be entertained through stories. That’s basically why books and movies are in business. Writing a lead is basically putting an intro to your story, so the lead itself should already tell a story! The trick here is to avoid being lengthy. 

Your story does not have to be supported by facts or studies, you can tell your own truth and personal experiences. In other words, it is best to appeal to emotions. You can open up about your humble beginnings and challenges that you encountered during the early days of your business.

In addition, when you craft your headline, make sure you keep it short. Whether that is a title for your blog post, the subject line for emails and Social Media headers, you have to keep it at 1 to 3 sentences at most. Last and most importantly, use a conversational tone. Your aim is to connect with your readers, not confuse or mislead them!

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