Since Lockdown there's one type of message that gives me… 

And there's no doubt about it. Greed /self-interest works as a way to win your prospects attention.

It works especially well if you are the first in a given market. Or if you are speaking to prospects that are complete newbies. Such as someone completely new to property investing.

When a prospect is completely new to property investing, something like this will make them drop everything and read your message…

How to make £1,000 monthly cash flow from ONE house

The problem with a greed hook like this is that most people that want to invest in property are not complete newbies. So the headline above is nothing new or exciting.

And…

There’s nothing in it to make you stand out from the crowd.

The easiest way to make a greed headline more appealing is to make it bigger. This is why many headlines enter…

The greed/ self-interest arms race

If a prospect already knows that it is possible to make £1,000 monthly cash flow from renting one house. Then how can you win their attention for a second time?

If the only attention-grabbing tool you've got is greed or self-interest then you've got to make the appeal bigger.

One way of doing that is to say...

How to make £2,000 monthly cash flow from one house.

I’ve seen companies go as far as saying…

How to make £1 million from ONE house!

There’s no doubt about it. If you can win the greed/self-interest arms race then you will win attention.

But…

Can you really deliver on the promise?

Or is the story you tell a unicorn? A one-off event that you haven’t been able to repeat.

You already know that if you need a unicorn story to win a prospect’s attention. And if that’s the message that makes them buy, you are setting yourself up for a lot of disappointed customers.

The other challenge with the greed/self-interest arms race is…

If you demand that your prospect jump across a believability chasm, your ad will fail!

Let’s say you have a repeatable way to make £1 million from one house. A way that other “ordinary people” can use to do the same thing.

And…

How many people are going to believe the claim? Seriously, how many people that know nothing about property investing will believe that?

Not many, right?

So, how many but-to-let investors would believe that claim?

Again, not many.

And…

Ae the prospects that do believe your claim the people you want to work with? Or are they likely to be get rich quick dreamers?

If your big greed claim will not attract your ideal customer then use the messaging that I’m about to show you to win the focused attention of a different type of customer.

If a huge self-interest claim is likely to make most of your ideal customer’s think “that’s not possible” then your ad will fail.

Eugene Schwartz talks about this problem in his book Breakthrough Advertising. If you’ve got an amazing claim that is true but not believable then you can’t use it as the headline or lead for your sales message. If you do, most of your ideal customers will not read your ad.

The solution is to create what Eugene Schwartz calls a believability bridge.

A believability bridge is where you start your message with a statement that is 100% believable by your audience. You could speak about the problem and hint at the solution. Or you could tone down the greed statement to the point where it is easily believable.

Your sales page or webinar then leads the prospects by the hand across the believability bridge from what they know and believe to what is possible with your solution.

With a believability bridge, your greed/self-interest solution makes the sale. But it is a statement that is easily believable that grabs the prospect's attention.

In other words, the headline

How to make £1 million from ONE house!

Would change to…

How a school teacher converted an empty office into flats and retired on the profit.

Or

How a school teacher converted an empty office into flats and retired on the profit. Here she explains how you can do this too starting with none of your own money while juggling a full-time job.

This is obviously a story based headline. From reading the headline you know that there is a happy ending… retire on the profit.

But the headline doesn’t make a big income claim which is why it’s different from the straight greed or self-interest headline that is often used.

Story headlines and leads work great. And there’s one way to grab your ideal customer’s attention that’s working even better right now…

News headlines work best right now!

It doesn’t take a psychologist to know that the “new normal” we are living through is a polite way of saying complete chaos.

So there’s a lot of confusion about what’s happening right now… what’s likely to happen tomorrow… and when people should take action.

If you can say, this is what is going to happen because of these market forces, then your prospect will believe your prediction.

The market forces are undeniable facts. That’s the foundation of your prediction. If the undeniable facts come from sources your prospect immediately trusts then the foundation for your prediction is much stronger. So if you’ve got Forbes and Bloomberg sources for financial facts, make sure you name drop.

When you make a prediction your message immediately has urgency because something is going to happen in 4 or 8 weeks… maybe sooner.

What a great reason to email your list… and what a great way to build trust. After all, you are letting the prospect know about a coming lucrative opportunity. An opportunity they can seize if they get ready now.

A prediction is also a great positioning tool because it makes you look like an expert. You're the one that has dug up the undeniable facts from trusted sources and identified the coming lucrative opportunity.

That’s an exciting and urgent message. A message that is the most important thing your prospect will read all day.

So…

What difference have news hooks made in sales?

A news and prediction sales message doubled sales for the same product in comparison with a greed lead.

And…

I’ve used a news and prediction sales message as an evergreen campaign that makes sales with NONE of the client’s time because we are using a pre-recorded webinar and sales page to make sales. Since April this evergreen campaign has made 6-figures every month like clockwork and added over 17,000 new people to the database!

The same product with a greed headline and lead quickly became unprofitable as an evergreen campaign. When I say quickly, I’m talking about a few weeks!

The product was the same. The offer was the same. The only difference was the headline and lead.

The news and prediction version was profitable for 4 months. The greed version didn’t last 4 weeks!

That’s the difference a news and prediction lead can make to your sales and profitable lead generation.

So…

News and predictions are the best way to grab your prospect’s attention right now. They are the best way to position yourself as an expert.

And…

A prediction immediately creates urgency for what you are selling because the window of opportunity will close fast.

When you use market forces to create urgency, you don’t need to try and create false scarcity. The market has already created scarcity for you. And your prospect can see and feel what happens if they wait because you have shown them the huge upside of acting now.

So…

What’s the coming change that will create a tsunami in your prospect’s life?

Brexit!

So are you showing your email database how they can cash in on the coming Brexit chaos?

Or…

Are you showing your email database how they can avoid the coming Brexit bloodbath?

If not, you are missing a huge trick!

If you would like to discuss how I can help you build a product launch around a News and Prediction hook then please complete the form below and book a no-obligation 30-minute video call.

The no-obligation call is our chance to get to know each other and to talk through some ideas for your next launch and how we can turn a winning sales message into an evergreen campaign that grows your list at a profit.

Until next time...

Carpe diem

Roland Eva