We recently had a chat with Joseph Hill, our director of digital strategy. With over ten years of experience in digital marketing and overseeing more than a hundred million dollars in marketing spend, Joseph has gained valuable insights into what makes good creative different from bad creative.
Today, we’ll be diving into three main sections: writing a compelling story, creating a powerful hook, and ensuring both are easily understandable.
In our conversation, Joseph shared his expertise and highlighted the importance of these three elements. By the end of this discussion, you’ll have a better understanding of how to excel in each area and elevate your creative endeavors.
Top takeaways:
Just because a problem exists it doesn’t mean your audience knows about it.
Creating a message that people want to hear. It’s better to be a pain pill than a multivitamin; 12X better. It’s better to solve a problem they have right now than a future problem.
When a problem is urgent, your customer wants to use it and price isn’t as much of a concern.
When it’s a future problem, it’s less of a priority and high sensitivity to price point.
It’s easier to channel an existing desire to fix a problem.
If our problem is new, we may need to start right from the beginning.
Some people are aware of the problem but don’t understand the severity.
Inform: make users aware of the problem and the signs they don’t have it.
Educate: Deepen the conversation by showing the damage and pain the problem can cause.
Hook: Once a user wants to solve it, we need to create a reason why. They should solve it with you.
You need to make your message simple to have success spreading it
Make your message simple, simple, simple. We can’t say it enough: keep it simple.
If you can solve a real pain point that your audience experiences, they’ll want to engage with you.
What do you do better than anyone else? Make that the solution, what does the hero get at the end of their journey? Make that the benefit.
Problem: What do you solve?
Solution: How do you solve it?
Benefit: Why should you solve it?
Every story has a hero + a beginning, middle, and end. (problem, solution, benefit).
Nowadays, it’s much harder, it’s not just about these three components. You now need a hook (why should they meet?). Combining your story with a powerful hook is the best way to drive meetings.
Creating a powerful hook
We have to it stupid to not take a meeting with us by promising value. Their time is very valuable, and they could pick anyone to talk to, so why should they pick you?
When we position ourselves in the reality that most of our customers don’t care about us, we’ll start playing the “value game.” How can we bring more value to the table, as long as you can solve their problems it will be a good experience.
Hooks come in many shapes and sizes by the best make you stand out.
If you have a resource that is worth a lot but costs nothing; you strike gold.
The easiest way to overcome “demo objection” is to offer instant value. Incentives are just one way to hook a user; you could use your knowledge.
Become easy to digest
Making people listen. But we must always remember, we have to earn their attention and it’s short.
“The average attention span has dropped roughly 66% in the last 20 years.”
When the copy and visuals tell a good story, people will resonate with it.
You need to make your message simple to have success spreading it. If you can solve a real pain point for your audience experiences, they’ll want to engage with you.
The best ad follows a clear storytelling formula whilst keeping it simple.
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