Cliffhangers… Leave Them Wanting More
All season has been leading up to this moment. The main character on your favorite show stands just on the brink of discovering the big “secret”. They reach out, a shot rings through the air and they grab their arm and fall to the ground…
And the show ends. Now you have to wait for months to see the next episode and find out if they live.
Shows and movies can keep you thinking about them for months because of excellent cliff hangers. Your fingers itch to turn the next page or you long to see the next episode. In quiet moments you can’t help but wonder if they’ll survive or make it back home. You are emotionally connected with them.
Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could do that with copywriting?
Guess what! You can.
Now I’m going to tell you a secret about copywriting. A secret that will shock you to your core – just like it shocked me when I first learned it. It has since changed my entire perspective on writing sales letters.
But first let me tell you why this affects you personally…
What? You want me to go on? But it’s a cliffhanger.
Cliffhangers are meant to draw you in, capture your attention and connect with you on a personal level. If your prospect isn’t interested in whatever you’re trying to sell then they aren’t going to pay any attention to it and that’s perfectly okay. With cliffhangers you’re targeting a specific audience who cares about what you have. You can connect with them emotionally because they already want what you have to give.
Cliffhangers come in dozens of different varieties. Many people use ones such as
? All the ________ Guru’s are wrong…
? All of the ________ Experts are wrong….
They place whatever expert they’re talking about in the blank whether it be weight loss, internet marketing, etc.
There are also the ones that use facts and stories and end with cliffhangers.
Such as:
A great old example of the Cliff Hanger is just where the term came from -
The great old Movie Serials of the 30′s and 40′s…Buck Rodgers and all The Western stars. Those serials are what inspired movies like “Star Wars”.
Another great first of the cliffhangers was Sherlock Holmes – “Hound of the Baskervilles” – published in The Strand Magazine at the turn of the last century. People were literally waiting outside the magazine office doors for the next installment to come out. It is essentially what made author Arthur Conan Doyle – and Sherlock Holmes – famous.
Movies and stories are different types of compelling copy than we are writing, but they still inspire ideas.
Just like the Heroes in those tales…
A cliffhanger ad has to be compelling to succeed…
How do we do that?
We will discover how in our next installment…”The Perfect Pitch”.
Don’t Miss It!
These of course are only a few examples of cliffhangers. Each has its perks.
Cliffhangers can be enticing and fun to write, but you have to be careful also. If you make a promise with your cliffhanger you must fulfill it within your sales letter. False promises will make your prospects leave the page more quickly than if you’d made no promise at all.
You can use cliffhangers in your ads or even as the opening for your letter. I have even seen many used at the end of a letter, making a promise that will be kept when the product is purchased. If done right they will boost the reading of you sales letter and/or sells of your product.
Of course you still have to have amazing copy…
But that is a topic for another post…
Learn the ins and out of copywriting and make your sales copy captivate your prospects and never let go. http://copywritingxtreme.com/
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Author: R.Hert
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