The Most Powerful Emotion In Your Copywriting Arsenal

Today I’m going to share with you the most powerful emotion you can inject into your copy that can cause your sales and conversions to blast off like a rocket.

And it’s not greed or fear…

Nor is it belief…

Or appealing to your readers self interest…

Although inciting those emotions can be very effective… however… there is one emotion that trumps all of them in its power to grab people’s attention (which is a rare commodity in the age of the smart phone and funny cat videos), and almost forces them to buy what you’re selling!

In fact… you’re probably feeling this emotion right now!

Can you guess what it is yet?

Okay… I shan’t keep you in suspense any longer. The emotion I’m talking about is curiosity.

What’s that? Don’t believe me?

Then at least listen to two of greatest advertising minds to grace this planet.

To quote the late great Gary Halbert:

“Curiosity is the number one copy appeal that makes people buy.”

And to quote Claude Hopkins:

“No other activating factor compares with curiosity.”

And this ain’t just some cookie platitude that just sounds good. Curiosity begets sales.

I particularly recall a Facebook ad and lander I wrote a while back, where curiosity was the sole driving force of the copy.

Now understand that your average Facebook ad gets a click-through rate of about 1{70bf3f0de345653d44762dc26ff670ad140dd79bcbd9067b668b28c6672699c3}. My ad with the curiosity driven headline…

“2 Seemingly Healthy Vegetables That Are Making You Fat”

… produced a click-through rate of a little of 9{70bf3f0de345653d44762dc26ff670ad140dd79bcbd9067b668b28c6672699c3}. And click-through rates that high can drive the cost per click on premium US traffic down to less than 2 cents a click!

And curiosity doesn’t just work at getting clicks… it produces muchos sales too!

In fact, curiosity was the main driving force behind Mel Martin’s copy which is responsible for turning BottomLine Publishing (formally Boardroom Publishing) into a multi million dollar publishing empire.

Just take a look at these bullets (or fascinations as Mel calls them) that Mel wrote for selling a golf book:

If the first thing you do before swinging is position your feet, you’ve got the order wrong. (See page 39.)
If your shots feel solid when you hit them, but the ball flies in the wrong direction anyway, see page 19.
Why copying the great golfers may be ruining your game. (Page 168)
How to develop a good swing that is natural for your own physique (and why only a strong pro can get away with imitating the way Nicklaus does it. Page 176.)

If you were a golfer, could you honestly tell me that you wouldn’t be interested in buying that book after reading just a few of those bullets?

I doubt it.

Oh… and if you are a golfer the book Mel was advertising was Practical Golf by John Jacobs. You can pick it up on Amazon now pretty cheap.

But getting back to the topic at hand… curiosity… By peppering your ads and sales letters with curiosity – particularly in your headlines and bullets – you create an itch in your readers mind.

And the only way you give them to scratch that pesky itch is to buy what you’re selling.

And even better… Tell them exactly how they can scratch that itch once they’ve bought what you’re selling. (Like Mel has done in the bullets above. E.g. See page 39)

And that about wraps up today’s marketing tip.

Moral of the story.

Make the readers of your ads itch, to make yourself rich.