Want to hear a scary story?
Imagine this: it’s time to write a sales page for a course.
You’re staring at a blank screen.
And… scene!
That’s the end of scariest possible story you could tell a writer.
Knowing exactly how to start a sales message of any kind is one of the hardest parts. But I’ve been showing you how Leads work this week, and Leads make your life, and the blank page, a million times easier to navigate.
(A Lead is how you start a sales message and it includes the Headlines, Subheadlines, and intro Body Text.)
I mentioned before that in the copywriting world there are 8 different types of Leads that work the best for selling products.
When I say "type of Lead", that means that your Headline, Subheadlines, and Intro Body Text are all united by a purpose or common thread. They’re all working in conjunction to capture your market’s attention and drive them deeper into the sales message.
The 8 types of Leads that work best are: Offer Leads, Scarcity Leads, Promise Leads, Problem-Solution Leads, Secret Leads, Quiz Leads, Proclamation Leads, and Story Leads.
So what you do is, before you write, you sit down and figure out what type of Lead will capture attention and get your prospects as pumped as possible to listen to a sales pitch.
When you nail it, a Lead will help you sell more products because your Headlines, Subheadlines, and Intro Body Text will grab attention and amplify the impact of the rest of the sales message.
Okay, I’m done selling you on learning Leads.
Long story short: Learn Leads because they’ll make you a better writer who makes more money.
Now, the next natural question from here is:
"How do you determine what type of Lead is best to use to start?"
There are 3 ways to figure out what type of Lead will be best.
Let’s start with the short-cut:
Method #1: What is your competition doing?
The easiest way to determine the best type of Lead is to look at what your competitors are doing.
I’m 99% sure I invited this phrase: "Model Then Innovate".
This goes for almost everything in life. Find someone who’s done what you want to do, and try using their overall strategy first. If it doesn’t work out for you, then you have permission to get creative.
Most people take the opposite approach: they get creative first and then they have no starting basis to know where things went wrong.
If all of your competitors are using a Promise Lead (look at yesterday’s email for an example), you should start with a Promise Lead.
This doesn’t mean that you copy your competition’s promise. It means that you just start like they do, with a Promise Lead (and your unique Big Idea right up front).
If your sales copy doesn’t get the results you want, you now have better data to look at. Is my product similar to theirs? Is there something missing or lacking in mine? Is their Promise Lead written better?
If you start to build a case that your product and copywriting is better… then you can look at the Lead and say – "Oh, maybe a different Lead type will produce better results."
There are a million possible variables in business and copywriting – make it easier on yourself by modeling (not copying) what the competition is doing to start, and then innovating when it makes sense.
Method #2: Are your prospects familiar with your company, what your product is and does, and thus, they’re familiar with the problem they have?
Sometimes "Model Then Innovate" won’t make sense to you or your current project. Your product is different or you can’t find competitors to look at. Maybe you just straight up want to do something different or want a fresh approach.
In this scenario you can look at your prospect and what we call "Awareness Levels".
This thinking was pioneered by Eugene Schwartz in Breakthrough Advertising.
Start by asking the question: are people very familiar with me (the sales spokesman) and/or my company? Do they know me, like me, and trust me?
Then ask yourself: Do they know the name of the product (before they’ll hit the sales page)? Do they know some benefits of the product or maybe even the Big Idea? How familiar are they with their problem – the problem that the product solves? Do they know they have the problem your product solves? Is it an urgent problem?
Is this product something you’re pretty confident they want (you will sell products where prospects don’t really know they need the product until you describe it to them)?
If you’re answering "YES" to a lot of these questions, then you can use a more Direct type of Lead.
Offer Leads, Scarcity Leads, Promise Leads are all more Direct.
Direct, in this case, means that you come out and state they’re selling somebody something in your Lead – and you promise the product will give them what they desire (or the relief they need).
Direct Lead types are not half-pregnant as Dan Kennedy would say.
Indirect Leads mean that the Lead does not hyper-focus on the product itself, it focuses on solving the problem prospects have before introducing the product.
The more Indirect Lead types are: Problem-Solution Leads, Secret Leads, Quiz Leads, Proclamation Leads, and Story Leads.
Method #3: Are you launching to a wider audience where competition is a main concern?
If "Model Then Innovate" isn’t going to work… and Awareness Levels don’t really make sense (new company, new product, paid traffic, etc)… you can try something called Market Sophistication – another concept invented by Schwartz.
Market Sophistication is the level (or number) of products, promises and competitors your prospect has been exposed to.
There are 5 levels. Level 1 is when you have no competitors, you’re first to market. Level 5 is when your prospects have seen it all (they’re overwhelmed and skeptical of any claims).
If you think your prospect is going to be skeptical of your sales pitch, then you want to use one of the Indirect Lead types mentioned above. Don’t start by telling them about your product. Tell them an interesting story of someone that achieved big things (because they used your product).
If there’s not a lot of competition but you’re sure there’s a market desire for your product and what it promises, you can just come out an say it. Use a Direct Lead type and mention your product (like yesterday’s example of the Learn UX course).
Wrapping Up:
What I’ve laid out above is just the overview. In order to make a real decision on which type of Lead to use to start a sales message, you’ll need to know exactly what each of the 8 types of Leads are (ie. What goes into a Secret Lead).
I can only include so much in a quick email series so if you want to go deeper into Leads then I’d recommend you join CopyHour or Email CopyHour the next time we open up.
Both courses teach you how to write Leads from start-to-finish, top-to-bottom.
That said, I’ve still got a few more thoughts I want to share with you on Leads in order to ensure that this has been the most helpful free series of emails ever written on the topic!
I’ll share some more tomorrow.
Talk to you then!
– Derek
P.S. I’m promoting the Breakthrough Advertising book this week because Eugene Schwartz is the one who pioneered the thinking on Awareness Levels & Market Sophistication. Hence, he’s the Godfather of Leads in my opinion. Those two concepts alone have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales for me.
If you’re an advanced copywriter, or some day want to achieve that advanced status, then this is one of the only hard copy books I’d recommend you have on your book shelf. There’s no digital copy out there for sale and it’s better that way. Not everyone is ready for Breakthrough Advertising because the concepts taught are best used by a copywriter who has achieved some results – I still have to read slowly and deliberately.
The reason I’m recommending you buy the book as soon as possible, no matter what your level, is because of the current price. If you go on Amazon you’ll find the book for $400+ and that price fluctuates up higher.
Brian Kurtz (legendary marketer and a really nice guy), is the new publisher and he’s selling it for $125 (plus a little extra for the Mastery Package which is a total no-brainer).
I recommend you buy the book now even if you might not fully be ready. One day soon, you’ll reach over, pull it off the shelf and it will change your life and how you approach copy forever.