---
title: "Hook"
module: "1"
type: lesson
order: 0
draft: false
---

![Hook](/images/book/Hook.png)

## Stop the Scroll

You arrive at the **ATTRACT** level with something most businesses never build: a finished **Foundation Blueprint**. You know your Company Context — what you sell, the mechanism that makes it work, the voice you speak in. You understand your Market — the competitors crowding the field and the trends moving beneath it. And through your Customer Avatar, you know the person you are trying to reach: their pains, their dreams, the beliefs they hold, and — crucially — the channels where they actually spend their attention. This is Step 1 of 9. You have done the thinking; now you begin the doing. By the end of this chapter you will have a bank of tested **hooks**, in words and in images, built to make exactly the right person stop.

Because that is the first, unforgiving problem of the digital marketplace. Being present is not the same as being seen. Your ideal customer moves through a feed at speed, thumb already travelling, attention rationed in fractions of a second. They are not looking for you. They are looking *past* you, the way they look past a hundred other stalls in a crowded market. Your stall can be beautifully stocked and still be invisible.

The **HOOK** is how you interrupt that motion. It is the opening line of an advertisement, the first frame of a video, the subject line, the headline, the thumbnail — the single element whose only job is to earn the next three seconds. Get it wrong and nothing else you have built matters, because no one reaches it. Your product photography, your carefully reasoned offer, your generous **GIFT** — all of it sits behind a door the prospect never opens. Get the hook right and you have created the opening that every later step depends upon. It is, pound for pound, the highest-leverage piece of copy and creative you will ever produce, because it governs how many people experience everything else.

In the language of the **Multiplier Principle**, the hook is your first lever: the click rate, the proportion of the people who see you who choose to look closer. It sits at the very front of the chain, which gives it a particular significance — every other lever in your business, however well-tuned, can only work on the people the hook lets through. Double your click rate and you have, in effect, doubled the raw material every later step has to work with. A weak hook does not just cost you clicks; it quietly throttles the entire multiplication downstream. This is why we begin here.

**The objective of this step:** to translate your Foundation Blueprint into context-aware opening messages — hooks, in both words and images — that interrupt your ideal customer's scrolling and signal, instantly, that this is relevant to them, priming them to receive the **GIFT** that follows.

## Why a hook works

A hook succeeds when it does two things in close to no time at all. First, it interrupts the pattern. The reader is scrolling on autopilot, their brain filtering aggressively for anything that looks like the noise it has already learnt to ignore. A hook that resembles everything around it is discarded before it ever registers in conscious thought. Something must break the rhythm — an unexpected claim, a question that lands too close to home, an image that does not belong in the feed. This is not a metaphor; it is how attention works. The mind is a pattern-matching machine running constantly in the background, and it only escalates something to your conscious attention when that thing violates the expected pattern. A good hook is a deliberate violation.

Second, and at almost the same instant, the hook must signal relevance. A pattern interrupt that grabs the wrong person, or grabs the right person about the wrong thing, buys you nothing but a wasted impression — and on paid channels, a wasted impression you have paid for. Interruption without relevance is just noise, and the feed is already full of it. The art of the hook is doing both at once: breaking the pattern *and* landing squarely on something the right person cares about.

This is why the hook is the most direct expression of your Foundation work. You are not guessing at what might stop a stranger; you are reaching for what you already know stops *this* person. Their pains let you name a frustration they feel before they have finished reading. Their dreams let you promise the progress they quietly want. Their beliefs let you agree with something they hold dear, or challenge something they have never questioned. Your Unique Mechanism gives you something to say that no competitor can honestly copy. Your Brand Voice ensures the interruption still sounds like you, so the attention you win is attention you can keep. And the channel context decides how the same idea is dressed for a Facebook feed, a Google search result, an email inbox, or a blog title. Without that intelligence, hooks are shots in the dark. With it, they are aimed.

## The anatomy of a hook

Before choosing an angle, it helps to understand what every strong hook is made of. Pull a dozen scroll-stopping hooks apart and you find the same four components, in different proportions.

The first is **specificity**. Vague hooks slide past; specific hooks snag. "Tired of admin?" is a shrug. "Still wrestling with a spreadsheet every payday?" is a hand on the shoulder. Specificity is what makes a hook feel written *for me* rather than for everyone, and it is the component most often missing from weak work. When a hook underperforms, the first question is almost never "was it clever enough?" — it is "was it specific enough?"

The second is an **emotional trigger**. Attention is emotional before it is rational. The hook reaches for a feeling the prospect already carries — the frustration of a recurring problem, the hope of a wanted outcome, the small indignation of being told something they suspect is wrong. You are not manufacturing the emotion; you are naming one that is already present, which is why your Avatar work matters so much. You can only press a button you know is there.

The third is a **curiosity gap** — an open loop the mind wants closed. "The small change that cut our returns in half" withholds exactly enough to make finishing the thought feel necessary. The gap must be honest: if the payoff behind the click does not deliver on the curiosity the hook created, you win the click and lose the trust, which is a poor trade.

The fourth is **fit** — the quiet component. A hook must fit the channel it appears on and the offer it leads to. A hook that fits the platform's native rhythm slips under the reader's advertising radar; a hook that matches the page behind it keeps the promise it made. Fit is what separates a hook that earns clicks from a hook that earns *customers*, and we will treat both halves of it — channel fit and message match — in their own right below.

## The Hook Grid

To generate hooks deliberately rather than hopefully, work from the **Hook Grid** — the signature tool of this step. Rather than waiting for a clever line to arrive, you choose an angle, attach it to the emotion your avatar is already feeling, and dress it for the channel. Each angle leans on a specific part of your Foundation, which is what keeps it honest and on-brand.

| Angle | Leans on (Foundation) | Emotional trigger | Pattern to adapt |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **Pain-focused** | Avatar pains and fears | Frustration, recognition | *"Still [struggling with X]?"* |
| **Benefit-focused** | Avatar dreams; value proposition | Desire, hope | *"Finally, [the outcome they want]."* |
| **Curiosity-focused** | Market gaps; avatar beliefs | Intrigue, the open loop | *"The [small thing] behind [surprising result]."* |
| **Authority-focused** | Unique mechanism; proof | Trust, reassurance | *"Why [credible specifics] change [the result]."* |
| **Contrarian** | Avatar beliefs; market clichés | Surprise, friction | *"Everything you've been told about [X] is wrong."* |
| **Story-focused** | Avatar's before-and-after | Relatability | *"How [someone like them] went from [before] to [after]."* |
| **Urgency-focused** | Genuine scarcity or timing | Fear of missing out | *"[Benefit] ends when [real deadline]."* |
| **How-to-focused** | Unique mechanism; quick win | Helpfulness, learning | *"How to [result] without [the usual cost]."* |

Each of these earns its place in different circumstances. A **pain-focused** angle is the natural choice when your avatar already knows they have a problem — it meets them where they stand and wastes no time. A **benefit-focused** angle suits the prospect who is dreaming of the destination more than dwelling on the pain. **Curiosity** and **contrarian** angles earn their keep when the prospect does not yet realise there is a better way, opening a loop their mind wants closed before you have to sell anything at all. **Authority** reassures the sceptical and the high-consideration buyer. **Story** lowers defences, because we are built to listen to narratives in a way we are not built to listen to claims. **Urgency** works only when the scarcity is real — a fabricated countdown trains your audience to distrust you, which is an expensive way to win one sale. And **how-to** trades pure attention for goodwill, leading with value in a way that pairs naturally with the **GIFT** to come.

Notice that the patterns are shapes, not scripts. *"Still struggling with X?"* is a frame; the power comes from the precision you pour into the blank. "Still wrestling with a spreadsheet to run your payroll?" stops a particular person far more reliably than "Tired of admin?" — because it is specific, and specificity, as we have seen, is the difference between a hook that feels written *for me* and one written for everyone.

## Matching the angle to awareness

Choosing an angle is not a matter of taste; it is a matter of where your prospect stands. The most useful lens here comes from the copywriter Eugene Schwartz, who observed that prospects sit at different **stages of awareness**, and that the same message will land or fail depending on the stage. Speak to a problem someone does not yet know they have and you sound irrelevant. Pitch a solution to someone who has not yet accepted they have a problem and you sound pushy. The angle must meet the awareness.

| Awareness stage | What the prospect knows | Angle that fits |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **Unaware** | Doesn't yet feel the problem | Story, contrarian — provoke recognition |
| **Problem-aware** | Feels the pain, not the solution | Pain-focused — name the frustration |
| **Solution-aware** | Knows solutions exist, not yours | Curiosity, authority — differentiate |
| **Product-aware** | Knows you, not yet convinced | Benefit, authority, urgency — reassure and prompt |
| **Most aware** | Ready, needs a reason now | Urgency, direct offer |

Your Avatar work should already tell you where the bulk of your target segment sits, and your channel reinforces it. Someone typing "best payroll software for small teams" into Google is solution-aware or product-aware — they have accepted the problem and are shopping. Someone scrolling Instagram on a Saturday morning is, more often than not, problem-aware at best and frequently unaware, which is why the cold feed rewards story and curiosity over a hard benefit pitch. Match the angle to the stage and the channel, and your hook starts working with the prospect's mindset instead of against it.

## The visual hook

So far we have spoken of hooks as words, and on search and email that is largely what they are. But on the feed-based channels where most ecommerce attention is bought — Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube — **the first hook is almost always visual**. The thumb stops on an image or a moving frame before a single word is read. If the visual does not interrupt the pattern, your perfectly crafted line is never seen. For an ecommerce business, mastering the visual hook is not optional; it is most of the game.

The same two jobs apply — interrupt, then signal relevance — but the tools are different. A **pattern-interrupt image** breaks the visual rhythm of the feed: an unexpected colour, an arresting facial expression, a product shown mid-use rather than on a sterile white background, a composition that looks like a friend's post rather than an advertisement. The feed has trained your prospect to glide past polished studio imagery precisely because it announces "advertisement". Imagery that looks native — shot on a phone, slightly imperfect, human — often outperforms the glossy alternative for exactly this reason, which is why user-generated content has become such a workhorse of ecommerce advertising.

In video, the hook is the **first one to two seconds**, and it is ruthless. A common and costly mistake is to open with a logo, a slow brand sting, or a tidy establishing shot. By the time the brand reveal arrives, the prospect is gone. The strong pattern is to open *in motion* and *in the middle* — the problem being felt, the result being enjoyed, the surprising moment first — and to earn the brand reveal later, once attention is held. Text-on-screen in the opening frame does double duty here, pairing a visual interrupt with a verbal one: the spoken or captioned line and the image reinforce a single idea.

## Dressing the hook for each channel

A single hook idea is rarely deployed unchanged. The same underlying insight — say, the payday-spreadsheet frustration — must be re-dressed for the rhythm, format, and constraints of each surface.

| Channel | The same idea, made native | Hard constraint to respect |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **Facebook / Instagram feed** | "Still wrestling with a spreadsheet every payday?" over a phone-shot image of a frustrated founder at a laptop | Roughly the first 125 characters show before "…see more"; the visual carries the first interrupt |
| **Google Search** | "Payroll for Small Teams — Run It in 10 Minutes" | ~30 characters per headline; intent is already high, so lead with the outcome, not the drama |
| **Email subject line** | "Your payday spreadsheet problem" | ~40 characters before truncation on mobile; the preview text is your second hook |
| **TikTok / Reels (spoken + caption)** | "POV: it's payday and you're back in the spreadsheet again" | The first 2 seconds decide everything; open mid-scene, not on a logo |
| **Pinterest** | A clean graphic: "10-minute payday, no spreadsheet" | The image is searched and saved; text must be legible at thumbnail size |
| **Blog / organic title** | "How small teams run payroll in ten minutes without a spreadsheet" | Front-load the keyword; you are competing in a search result, not a feed |

Two things stand out from the table. First, the *idea* is constant while the *expression* changes — which is why you anchor every hook in a Foundation insight rather than a turn of phrase. Second, mobile constraints are real and unforgiving. The 125-character fold on Facebook, the 40-character ceiling on a mobile subject line, the two-second video window: these are the physical limits within which your hook must do its work.

## Writing yours

Begin with one segment of your avatar and one channel — not all of them at once. Establish where that segment sits on the awareness ladder, let that choose your angle, and then write the most specific version of it you can bear, naming the real frustration or the real outcome rather than its vague cousin. Then write more. The discipline that separates seasoned operators here is volume followed by ruthlessness: they draft ten or fifteen hooks for a single angle precisely so they can discard most of them, because the first hook you write is rarely your best, and a hook's quality is decided by the audience, not the author. Generate broadly, then cut without mercy.

Resist the pull toward cleverness for its own sake. A pun that wins a smile but blurs the relevance has failed at its one job; the cleverest hook in the account is worthless if it does not stop the right person about the right thing. Capture each contender in the Hook Worksheet, grouped by angle and channel, so your testing later is organised rather than chaotic.

## Message match: the quiet campaign-killer

There is a failure mode that does not show up in your hook's click-through rate at all, and is all the more dangerous for it: the campaign that wins clicks and converts none of them. Almost always, the culprit is **message match** — a break between what the hook promised and what the prospect found on the other side of the click.

A hook is a promise. "Still wrestling with a spreadsheet every payday?" promises relief from exactly that pain. If the click lands on a generic homepage that says nothing about payroll, the promise is broken in the first second, and the prospect — who arrived genuinely interested — leaves confused. The hook did its job; the page betrayed it. The fix is to ensure tight continuity from hook to destination: the same language, the same pain or outcome, the same visual world.

This matters enormously for the step ahead, because your hook does not lead to a sales page. It leads to a **GIFT** — a piece of free value — and the gift must answer the precise hook that earned the click. Agitate the spreadsheet frustration in the hook and the gift should be the thing that relieves it. When hook, gift, and the page between them tell one continuous story, attention flows through without friction.

## Accelerating with AI

This is a step where artificial intelligence earns its place, because the work rewards volume and you bring the judgement to sort it. Open the Hook prompt and feed it the relevant pieces of your Foundation Blueprint — your avatar's specific pains and dreams, their likely awareness stage, your unique mechanism, and your Brand Voice adjectives. Ask it for fifteen hooks across two or three angles, and ask it to respect your channel's constraints. What returns is raw material, not finished copy: treat it as a generative draft to be refined against everything this chapter has given you. Cut the generic, sharpen the specific, check each survivor against the awareness stage and the message it will need to match, and keep only those that could stop the particular person you have in mind. The model multiplies your output; your foundation-trained judgement decides what survives.

## What good looks like

Once your hooks are live, the signal to watch is click-through rate, read against the benchmark for the channel it is running on.

| Channel | Healthy CTR range | Note |
| :--- | :--- | :--- |
| **Paid social** (Meta) | 1.71% average (traffic campaigns); 2.59% (lead campaigns) | Median is low; the visual hook usually moves this most |
| **Google Search** | ~6–7% | Intent is already present; outcome-led hooks win |
| **Google Display** | ~0.4–0.6% | A low bar; relevance and visual interrupt are everything |
| **Email** (open rate) | 30–45% reported | Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates reported open rates; click-to-open rate (CTOR) is a more reliable engagement metric |

A hook running well below the benchmark for its channel is rarely a problem you can polish away with a better word. More often it is telling you something structural: the angle is mismatched to the audience, or the message is reaching for a pain your avatar does not actually feel, or — on the feed — the *visual* is failing before the words ever get their chance.

## Action Checklist

- [ ] **Review Foundation (FIND Strategy):** Confirm your prioritised target channels and corresponding customer segments identified in your Foundation work.
- [ ] **Review Foundation (Avatar/Company):** Revisit key Customer Pains/Goals and your Core Value Prop/Unique Mechanism relevant to this hook.
- [ ] **Select Primary Hook Angle:** Choose the main approach (Pain, Benefit, Intrigue, etc.) based on your awareness-level analysis.
- [ ] **Run AI Prompt (Angle 1):** Generate 10–15 initial hook options for your chosen angle and primary channel. *Remember to inject your Foundation context.*
- [ ] **Run AI Prompt (Angle 2 — Optional):** Generate variations using a secondary angle for testing.
- [ ] **Review & Refine AI Outputs:** Evaluate for specificity, emotional trigger, curiosity gap, and channel fit. Cut the generic; sharpen the specific.
- [ ] **Select Top 3–5 Hooks:** Choose the strongest contenders for initial testing.
- [ ] **Check Message Match:** Ensure each surviving hook connects cleanly to the GIFT it will lead to.
- [ ] **Draft Act 1 Creative:** Incorporate selected hooks into initial channel assets (ad headlines, content titles, video opener outlines).
- [ ] **Output Check:** Ensure you have your hook bank documented by angle and channel, ready to deploy and test.

## AI Prompts for This Step

*Always paste your Foundation Blueprint into the chat before running any of these prompts. Replace every placeholder with your specific data.*

---

**Prompt H1 — Pain-Focused Ad Headlines**

```
ROLE: Act as an expert Direct Response Copywriter specialising in high-impact ad headlines for Ecom, focusing on resonating with customer pain points.

OBJECTIVE: Generate 5 compelling Facebook Ad headline variations designed to stop the scroll by directly addressing or agitating a core customer pain point.

CONTEXT:
- Brand Voice: [e.g., Empathetic, Direct, Problem-Solving]
- Product: [What you sell and how it solves the pain]
- Target channel: Facebook Feed
- Target audience: [Avatar profile]
- Core Pain Point to target: "[Paste EXACT pain from your Avatar]"
- Underlying Fear: [e.g., 'Feeling foolish for wasting money']
- These headlines lead to a Gift/Product page.

KEY INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Generate 5 distinct headline options.
2. Each must directly reference or strongly imply the specific Pain.
3. Use empathetic or slightly agitating language consistent with the Brand Voice.
4. Keep headlines concise and scroll-stopping.
5. Hint that a solution exists without revealing the full product.

TONE & FORMAT: Match Brand Voice. Numbered list of 5 headline options.
```

---

**Prompt H2 — Benefit-Focused Content Titles (SEO)**

```
ROLE: Act as an expert SEO Content Strategist and Copywriter specialising in clickable, benefit-driven titles for blog posts targeting Ecom audiences.

OBJECTIVE: Generate 5 SEO-friendly blog post title variations focused on a key Customer Goal/Dream Outcome.

CONTEXT:
- Core expertise: [e.g., AI-powered Ecom automation]
- Brand Voice: [e.g., Authoritative, Helpful, Results-Oriented]
- Target keyword theme: [e.g., "automate e-commerce marketing"]
- Target audience: [e.g., Busy Ecom Owners]
- Customer Goal/Dream Outcome: "[Paste EXACT Goal from your Avatar]"
- Common belief to challenge: [e.g., "automation is complex or expensive"]

KEY INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Generate 5 distinct title options.
2. Each must clearly promise progress towards the specific GOAL.
3. Incorporate target keywords naturally.
4. Reflect Brand Voice.
5. Consider titles that implicitly challenge the stated belief.

TONE & FORMAT: Authoritative, Helpful. Numbered list of 5 options with a suggested focus keyword for each.
Constraints: No clickbait. Keep within ~60 chars for SEO.
```

---

**Prompt H3 — Intrigue-Based Social Media Openers**

```
ROLE: Act as a creative Social Media Copywriter skilled at using pattern interrupts and curiosity to stop scrolling.

OBJECTIVE: Generate 5 intriguing opening lines (first 1-2 sentences) for social media posts that capture attention by challenging a common belief or teasing unique information.

CONTEXT:
- Unique Mechanism: [e.g., 'Using AI sentiment analysis to craft email subject lines']
- Brand Voice: [e.g., Edgy, Confident, Insightful]
- Target channel: [e.g., Instagram/Facebook feed]
- Common market belief to challenge: [e.g., 'Subject line length is the most important factor']
- Target audience: [e.g., Growth-focused Ecom marketers]

KEY INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Generate 5 distinct opening line options.
2. Each must create intrigue or challenge the stated common belief.
3. Hint at a better approach tied to the Unique Mechanism.
4. Match Brand Voice.
5. Be concise and immediately attention-grabbing.

TONE & FORMAT: Numbered list of 5 options (1-2 sentences each).
```

---

**Prompt H4 — Video/Ad Opening Hook Script Lines**

```
ROLE: Act as a Video Script Writer specialising in the critical first 3-15 seconds of video ads.

OBJECTIVE: Generate 5 opening hook script options for a short video ad designed to stop the scroll and establish relevance immediately.

CONTEXT:
- Brand Voice: [Adjectives]
- Product/Offer: [Brief description]
- Target audience: [Profile]
- Primary Pain: [Pain]
- Primary Goal: [Goal]
- Awareness level on this channel: [Problem/Solution/Product Aware]
- Channel & format: [e.g., Facebook/Instagram Reels, 15-30 sec ad]

KEY INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Generate 5 distinct video opening hook options (spoken lines, first 3-7 seconds).
2. Each must immediately signal relevance to the target audience.
3. Vary angles: include at least one Pain hook, one Benefit/Curiosity hook, one Pattern Interrupt.
4. Keep spoken lines natural and conversational.

TONE & FORMAT: Conversational, punchy. Numbered list of 5. Spoken lines in quotes, on-screen text in [brackets].
```

---

*Always refine AI output for your unique brand voice and context before using.*
