Hook marketing is a way of immediately attracting the attention of your audience, by appealing to their emotions, interests or needs.

If you’re fishing, your hook will be a literal hook that will catch a fish. In marketing, it’s a virtual hook that reels in consumers to buy your product or service or look at something you’re offering. 

The hook can be many things, such as a phrase, a video, an image, or anything that instantly attracts the attention of your reader.

It’s one of the most effective strategies. If you think about it, when you are scrolling through social media, you’ll see hundreds of posts and stories, but there will be some that will make you stop and look – what is it that captures your attention? It’s the hook that the person or business uses that stops you in your tracks, so you click to see more.

To better explain, here are a few examples of phrase hooks:

• What happens next will shock you!
• Want to know the secret?
• The one thing you’re missing.
• This is what everyone’s been talking about

These kinds of hooks call out to your natural curiosity. You’re not necessarily interested, but you click anyway! 

Why is so effective?

In today’s world, most people have a very limited attention span, as they are exposed to hundreds, if not thousands of advertising messages every day. When you’re on social media, and you’re aimlessly scrolling, how many posts do you actually remember? The chances are it’s very few. That’s why it’s so hard to attract attention to your particular brand – there is just so much competition. But if you CAN capture that attention, you are onto a winning streak. A good hook can help you stand out from the crowd and gives you the opportunity to connect with potential buyers or followers. And, as you saw with the example hooks, driving curiosity automatically makes the reader want to know more.

Types of hook

There are various types of hooks, so let’s delve a little deeper:

Emotional

If you use emotion as a hook, you’ll be evoking feelings of happiness, sadness, nostalgia, fear, hope, anger etc. The emotion you decide to evoke will depend on what you’re trying to achieve with the content you want attention drawn to.

An example would be Coca-Cola. They have used several different hooks:

• The diet coke break – we all remember the muscly man stripping off his shirt as it’s soooo hot, then downing a coke. All the women in the nearby office are swooning at the sight of a semi-clad man drinking coke. You don’t necessarily get hooked intentionally, but you’ll remember it!
• They also use the ‘holidays are coming’ slogan with the big red lorry near Christmas, advertising their coke. This evokes feelings of nostalgia, excitement, and happiness as Christmas is coming!

Another example, for me, would be the Go Compare ads with the opera singer. I found this ad extremely irritating and annoying, but I remember it!

If you want to use an emotional hook, you need to first identify what emotion is relevant to your products or services. Then use stories, images, or videos to convey that emotion to your audience. Just ensure that the emotion you are trying to evoke is relevant to your brand.

Curiosity

I’ve already talked a bit about this one. Curiosity is probably one of the strongest hooks you can use. Everyone is naturally curious and if you can use this in your hook, you will be able to drive your audience to want to find out more about your products or services.

Examples could include books and films.

• An author will write a short paragraph on the back of a book to describe the story in brief. It doesn’t give away the plot but gives just enough information to pull the reader in to want to know more…so they buy the book to read it.
• When a film is about to released, there is usually a trailer. You’ll have been in the cinema and seen trailers for films ‘coming soon’ or seen trailers on sites like Netflix. These give an exciting part of the film, be it scary, sad, fast moving etc – this is designed to pull you in and make you want to watch the film. It’s a hook that piques your curiosity.

If you want to use a curiosity hook, you’ll need to think of something that your products or services do to solve a challenge or a problem, or a product that has a quirky or unusual benefit. Then create content that tells them a little and gives some of the answer, leaving the most important part unanswered or unsolved. This compels your audience to want to know more, so they will read your article, or go explore your website or your products/services. You’d need to use an eye-catching title or heading to get them in!

Fear Factor

This kind of hook uses fear in two ways.

• The first is fear of personal safety, to highlight a potential threat or risk. We see this all the time on TV ads and programmes. How many of you have a ring camera? Ads are constantly telling us that we need one of these so we can feel safer in our own homes. You can see who is at the door before you open it and you can even talk to people on your phone who are at the door, when you’re not home. The camera is an added bonus in that it can deter criminals and if it doesn’t, it can capture their image on camera.
  
  It also uses fear from your online perspective – you need this software and that software to protect your PC, phone, iPad, data etc. If you ignore it, it could cost you much more than you think.
• The second is fear of missing out – FOMO – an example of this would be getting the latest phone from a particular brand. You don’t need the new iPhone, but it’s got SO MANY NEW AND AMAZING FEATURES, if you don’t, you’ll be hugely missing out. It’s likely that the phone you got three or four years ago – or longer in my case (!) – is perfectly adequate, but you’re persuaded by the very clever advertising that you’re going to be left behind in technology if you don’t upgrade.

This is quite a difficult hook to use for a small business, and you’d need to absolutely deliver what you’re promising in your hook, so not one I’d advise!

Storytelling

I’ve said this before, but everyone loves a good story. We’ve grown up with stories, be it from books, our parents or grandparents telling us stories about when they were young. Storytelling is an immensely powerful way to capture the attention of your audience and one that is highly effective for small businesses.

A story can be anything you want it to be. It can be sad, happy, informative, or entertaining. Above all, it must be relevant to your business. But if you can find a way to tell a story around one of your products or services, you will capture the attention of your audience, which will make that product or service very appealing.

That’s why a lot of big brands use celebrities to advertise their products – they show a celebrity at home doing ‘normal’ things with their families and oops there’s an accident and something gets spilt on a dress or shirt.

Oh no! Will the stain come out?

Of course, it will – with the new super duper stain removing product!

Cut to celebrity pulling previously mentioned item out of the washing machine and hey presto – it’s white again!

And all this happens in just a few seconds, but this captures your attention, and you’ll subconsciously remember that product.

The key here is to keep your story short and simple and relevant, so your audience can easily identify with it – something that has impact but is memorable.

Scarcity

This kind of hook works on the basis that people in general want things that are in short supply – and it links into FOMO (fear of missing out).

If you buy online from some of the big sellers, such as Amazon, you’ll often see a message saying, ‘only 1 left in stock’, or it might say ‘limited offer only’. This creates a sense of urgency encouraging buyers to make their decision quickly!  

Anyone can use this hook, whether you’re a small or large business, but the only caveat I would include is that only do it if the offer is genuine. I often see ads for something that only has 2 days left to make my mind up to buy – only to find it a week or two later still saying the same thing. If you have a limited time offer, state the limited time date, and stick to it, or you might find you lose the trust of your customers. The same applies to ‘only one left in stock’ – only say that if it’s genuine.

Personally, this is my least favourite hook, but it is popular and does work well.

Problem/Solution   

This is exactly what it says on the tin. You have identified a specific problem that your customers have – and your product or service is the solution to that problem. This is an effective hook if advertised properly, as you can clearly show the value of your products/services and prove that they work. A case study or previous customer review can help with the proof and then you have a good hook.

To use it for your business, you must identify your customers’ problems or pain points – present that problem and show how your product or service is the answer!

Visual

Visual hooks reel your audience in with a striking image or a brilliant video – both will capture their attention. Visual hooks notoriously provoke an emotional response and are used to spark curiosity.  

Ensure that any images or videos you use are your own, wherever possible; play with colours and shapes to make them really eye catching and use them sparingly, so they don’t become wallpaper to your brand. The visual hook must align with your brand and messaging, so once you have that sorted, you’re good to go!

I hope this has helped you understand a bit more about hooks and how they work.

If you need any help with your marketing or talking through or brainstorming ideas for hooks for your business, get in touch and we can have a call.