ecommerce store

If you have an ecommerce store, a great way to do this is by using Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs). Dynamic Product Ads are customized ads that automatically promote the appropriate products to people who have visited those specific products or product categories. For example, if you own an online clothing retailer, you can set up automation rules to show unique ads to anyone who visits the add-to-cart page or checkout page for your “Fall Selection Boots.” You can show them product ads reminding them to get the boots before they are out of stock, you can show them other similar products they may like, or you can do something different. You don’t need to get it perfect. Remember: this is “low-hanging fruit.” You just need to get something running—you can always get fancy later.

what the heck is “hacking the hook”? Well, first of all, what the heck is a “hook”?

Think of a hook as a tool that you use when you, the humble advertiser, are “fishing for customers.” Even though I live on Cape Cod (where I’m fairly certain a lot of fishing goes on), I’ve never actually “fished” on Cape Cod, so I’m certainly not the most qualified person to talk about fishing, but let’s give it a try anyway.

In our little analogy here, think of your customers as “the fish” and your marketing message as “the hook.” The hook (yes, I know it doesn’t work well without “the bait,” but go with me on this one) “hooks” your customer into your sales system, turning people who don’t know you into lifelong customers.

REELING IN YOUR CUSTOMERS WITH A HOOK

So what is a hook? Simply put, it’s the marketing message. It’s your 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.

Now, a hook and an offer are two different things. Both of those key elements of customer acquisition work in tandem with each other to “reel that customer in” (back to the dang fishing analogy).

So let me give you an example. In the Ketogenic Living ad that we discussed in previous chapters, the ad title reads: “Is breakfast really the most important meal of the day?” When prospects read this they think, “Geez, I thought it was, but maybe he’s saying it isn’t’?” With this hook, what we’ve done is create “a knowledge gap.”

What’s a “knowledge gap,” you say? This happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge, which makes us feel an inherent pain like an itch we can’t scratch. To “scratch” it, we need to fill “the knowledge gap.” In the ad, we’ve triggered the curiosity to want to learn more, so they continue to read to do just that, while filling the knowledge gap at the same time.

And that’s just one kind of a hook.

As you can see, this ad is a perfect example of both being counter-intuitive while evoking curiosity via a “knowledge gap.” In using a counter-intuitive statement like “Is breakfast REALLY the Most Important Meal of the Day?” the ad copy serves to both shatter conventional wisdom and challenge the reader’s understanding of “what good nutrition looks like” while also creating a fairly hefty knowledge gap.

David Ogilvy said something along the lines of “the reason why you write your headline is so that they read your sub-headline and the reason why you write your sub-headline is so that they read your body copy.” As the father of modern day advertising, he knows what he’s talking about.

This concept is the exact same thing with any ad you write. That first line, that essential chunk of copy that is the prospects’ first point of contact with you, has to be so knock-their-socks-off good that they feel compelled to read onwards all the way to the end. At that point, they do what you ask next in your call to action. Namely,