The hook of your advertisement (Facebook or Instagram copywriting techniques) is very important.
It’s the little phrase that grabs and holds the attention of your ideal customer. It is the one that creates desire and incites action (naturally).
In just a few words (or even a few lines), the hook persuades your ideal customer to take the action you’re looking for, whether it’s watching a video, downloading a lead magnet, or clicking the ad to buy on your e-commerce store.
The hook of your ad (Facebook or Instagram) can be short or long.
It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you can show your ideal customer that you understand them and that you probably have something of interest to offer them, while reducing any potential objections or barriers to purchase that they might have. .
The hook of your advertisement (Facebook or Instagram) can be written in different ways.
You may have already noticed this by watching the ads in your news feed.
For example, you can start your hook with a question, a statement, a statistic or a verbatim. There really isn’t a better way.
It all depends on the context, your product and the customer journey (illustrated by my pretty pyramid).
Either way, the hook of your ad can drastically increase the click-through rates of your ads as long as you take the time to write about what interests your customer, and not just to talk about your product. /service.
It takes practice … and knowing a few copywriting principles.
In this article, I invite you to find out how to write compelling Facebook / Instagram ad teasers using these copywriting techniques that I’m going to share with you.
You are ready ?
Let’s go!
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1) Vitamin or painkiller?
Let’s start with your product.
Before we start writing your teaser for your ad, we need to answer the following question:
” Is my product a pain reliever or is it a vitamin?” ”
In other words, does your product fix an existing problem that is causing your customer to suffer, or does it help them achieve a goal more easily?
Put another way, a pain reliever responds to a pain, something that actually bothers your client, or an unmet need, while a vitamin is a product that improves your client’s life, without being an absolute necessity.
Source: Kyle Sandburg
Among the examples that you see on this table, you notice for example that Uber is a pain reliever.
Uber doesn’t just solve a problem of getting from point A to point B (taxis already solved it). Uber offers passengers the certainty that they will be picked up by a driver at a set time.
Examples of vitamin include fitness tracking apps, such as Fitbit.
Fitbit doesn’t really relieve physical or psychological pain.
Fitbit provides you smartwatches to help you keep track of sports activity, count the kilometers traveled when you go for a run, measure your heart rate, and more.
In theory, a pain reliever is easier to sell than a vitamin since customers are already feeling the pain. In the vast majority of cases, this is true.
Calling out pain captures and holds attention. Giving the painkiller (the product) creates desire and induces action. Especially since if you state your customer’s problem, they’ll think you have the solution.
But, where it gets really interesting is that you can disguise your product as a painkiller to make it feel painful.
This is the example of Slack that Yann Leonardi shared with me in this article on my blog. Slack is the “email killer” that promised to put an end to incessant business emails.
However, the customer did not initially “suffer” with emails. He was already able to communicate with anyone in the world and organize team projects.
After all, email is still the most widely used means of communication on the Internet today.
Slack has come to improve this mode of intra-company communication to facilitate communications around a project … and to put an end to incessant emails (the pain that Slack promised to relieve you – but of which you were not necessarily aware before arrival from Slack).
The Slack example is very interesting because you will always be able to find a way to disguise your product as a painkiller. This is where your.
If you have followed this well, depending on whether your product is a painkiller or a vitamin, you will be able to start your advertising catch in different ways.
For the painkiller, you will start your hook in one or the other way:
- State the pain / problem you are relieving
- Talk about the need you are fulfilling
For the vitamin, you will:
- Speak to the wants or desires of your ideal client
- Disguise your product as a pain reliever and state a pain or problem
To illustrate this point, imagine a brand of jewelry.
Jewelry is not essential. You can hardly bring up a pain or a problem to sell a piece of jewelry.
And yet …
A jewelry brand can easily speak to the desires of women who want to buy jewelry:
- Feel beautiful
- Feel more important (status)
- Have fun (without leaving home)
- Treat yourself to something new
But , she could also position her offer according to the problems / frustrations of her client in terms of jewelry:
- She only finds expensive jewelry
- She never finds the model she wants
- The jewels she finds do not allow her to assert her uniqueness
In short, you understood it. Depending on whether your product is a painkiller or a vitamin, you will write your headlines differently.
Let’s move on.
2) Direct or indirect lead? It depends on …
Very good !
You now know if your product is a painkiller or a vitamin, you will be able to write the first lines of your advertising catchphrase.
Not so fast, have you thought about your customer journey?
Not all of your customers are at the same level of awareness.
Some are already aware of their problem and have identified it correctly (eg: “I am advertising Facebook, but I have the wrong strategy”) while others are only in the process of identifying it ( eg: I advertise on Facebook, the results are bad, but I don’t know why ”).
Finally, there are others who already know the solutions on the market (including yours), but they have not yet taken the step to afford it.
Copywriters describe these different degrees of awareness as the “5 levels of consciousness”, as illustrated in this diagram by Eugene Schwartz, author of the famous book .
Here are the 5 levels of consciousness described by Eugene Schwartz in his book:
- Unconscious: the prospect doesn’t even know he has a problem
- Aware of the problem: the prospect becomes aware of the problem
- Aware of the solutions to this problem: the prospect searches for and discovers the solutions to this problem
- The prospect is now aware of the product / service that solves his problem … but does not necessarily know yours
- The prospect knows your brand and your product / service. They know enough about you and your offer to make a buying decision
At each level of consciousness, you will be speaking to your client in a different way. The more aware the person is about their problem and your solution, the more effective the direct and commercial hooks will be.
Conversely, the less the person is aware of the problem, the more your hooks will be indirect and focused on education towards the problem you are addressing . It goes through storytelling, questions or amazing affirmations.
When you start to write your ad slogan, you must therefore take into account the level of awareness of your prospect, among the 5 levels that I told you about.
Is your prospect aware of their problem? Does he know the solutions to solve it? Is he aware that a product / service like yours exists on the market? And most importantly, is he aware that you exist and you market this product / service?
The answers to these questions will allow you to choose the right Lead (direct or indirect) to start your hook. These are the first lines that you are going to write, so you are going to have to spend some time there 🙂
The direct lead is rather used when your prospect knows your product/service and your brand. It can also be used if your prospect knows the solutions in the market, but not yours.
