When it comes to marketing, most people obsess over the body of their ad, email, or content - but they're missing the most important part: the hook.

The hook is the first thing people see and hear, and it's what sells them on paying attention to the rest of what you've created.

David Ogilvy wisely said: After you've written your headline, you've spent eighty cents of your advertising dollar.

This idea was powerfully illustrated by a story told by Dean Graziosi. He once created an infomercial with Larry King, using an opening hook that was all about himself and his accomplishments. The ad bombed.

He then changed a single sentence—the hook—to one that addressed the audience directly: Have you ever in your adult life looked at yourself in the mirror and thought I should be further ahead by now?. This simple change turned the infomercial into a monster hit that sold millions of books.

This story highlights a crucial lesson: the hook isn't about you; it's about the audience. It's about making them feel important and convincing them that your content is for them.

How Hooks Work

A good hook has two main parts:

1. A Call Out: This is what gets the prospect's attention and makes them think, This is for me. Think of it like hearing your name in a crowded, noisy room - a phenomenon scientists call the cocktail party effect. A successful hook cuts through all the noise to get noticed.
2. A Condition for Value: This is the promise you make to the audience. It tells them, If you consume this, you will get value. The promise can be explicit, like If you watch this video, you will know how to get your kids to behave, or implicit, such as showing a desired result and then inviting them to learn how you achieved it.

Types of Hooks

Hooks can be verbal (words) or nonverbal (visuals and sounds). The best advertisers often use both together.

Here are some of the most effective verbal hook types, with examples:

• Labels: Directly call out your target audience.
  • Example: Local business owners, I have a gift for you.
• Questions: Pique curiosity or get a yes from the audience.
  • Example: Would you pay $1,000 dollars to have the business of your dreams in 30 days?.
• Conditionals: Set up a scenario that leads to a result.
  • Example: If you're working all the time and your business isn't growing, you're working on the wrong sh*t.
• Commands: Give a direct instruction or suggestion.
  • Example: Read this if you're tired of being broke.
• Statements: Make a bold claim or promise.
  • Example: The smartest thing you can do today...
• Lists or Steps: Promise a specific, valuable takeaway.
  • Example: In this video I'm going to talk to you about the 28 ways to stay poor.
• Narratives: Begin a compelling story.
  • Example: One day I was in the back and this old lady comes in and she was piss angry.
• Exclamations/Provocative Statements: Express strong emotion or surprise.
  • Example: Agghhhhh... This is the blueprint to becoming a millionaire and I'm going to walk you through the levels.

The 70-20-10 Rule for Hook Creation

The key to consistently creating winning hooks is to follow the 70-20-10 model, a strategy used by Google for resource allocation.

• 70% Core Business: Dedicate the majority of your effort to what's already proven to work. Review your top-performing content, ads, and emails, and reuse those hooks. This guarantees a baseline of performance and keeps your advertising stable.
• 20% Emerging Business: Focus on ideas that show promise but aren't fully proven yet. Look at what's working in other niches or what your competitors are doing, and adapt those concepts for your own business.
• 10% Big New Ideas: Reserve a small portion of your effort for completely new, risky ideas. These are experiments that could lead to huge wins. If an experiment works, it moves into your 70% core bucket; if it fails, you document it so you don't repeat the mistake.

A Simple Checklist for Your Hooks

To get started, here's a simple checklist to follow for your marketing efforts.

First Time Through:

• Look at top-performing ads or content from other people and isolate their hooks.
• Write down your favorite 50 hooks and use all of them in your ads and content.

Every Time After:

• Review your top 10% performing content.
• Make 70% of your new content using those winning hooks.
• Create 20% of your content by making small changes or permutations to those hooks.
• The final 10% should be completely new hooks, repeating the first time through process.

Your business's entire success can hinge on the first few seconds of a video, the first line of an email, or the first sentence of a post.

Mastering this skill is how you can get more and better customers for the same effort, unlocking new levels of scale and profitability.

Keep Crushing!
- Sales Guy