Leads

Let’s start with leads. 

The lead is usually the first several hundred words of your copy. If your copy is short, it might be the first few lines. The word lead usually refers to the beginning of a sales page, though it also applies to the beginning of any copy you might write. It’s a term borrowed from journalism… the lead (originally spelled lede) is the beginning of the news story. The spelling has shifted over the past few decades and now is often written as lead. We’ve chosen to use the more modern version of the word here.

This introductory copy can be grouped into several different categories. Thanks to the excellent book by Michael Masterson and Jack Forde, Great Leads, most direct response writers tend to think of leads in six or seven different categories. There are actually more than that, but their categories are a good place to start.

What I’ll share here are the most common. The lead you use depends on the stage of awareness of your customer. Some leads work much better when your prospect knows about your product or service and that they want what you have to offer. But customers who are unaware or problem aware will respond better to leads that tell stories and help develop the relationship you have with them.

Let’s start with Offer and Invitation leads. These are best when you’re writing for a most aware audience. That is, they are ready to buy your product. A lead like this might begin like this actual promotion…

Your exclusive invitation

Note: The following invitation expires at 

Midnight on August 24th, 2013

It will not be made again…

Dear reader,

My name is Simon Munton. I work on the publishing team at Port Phillip Publishing.

Let me start by saying: this invitation has been eight years in the making.

You won’t have seen anything like this before—not from us, anyway.

And it’s not being made to everyone. Only to people like you who value the research we publish.

I’d like to invite you to join a project to build a particular kind of wealth. It’s called Family Wealth.

Put simply:

It’s a new way for you to accumulate wealth. And make sure that wealth stays intact. Not just for retirement. But for your children, and your grandchildren.

Notice this lead is structured as an actual invitation. And it’s exclusive, only available to a select few. It jumps right into the offer, not wasting any time developing a story, or doing much authority building outside of the introductory line. It’s clearly written to an audience familiar with this company and expert. They are almost certainly most-aware readers.

Here’s another example…

By invitation only

Become One of 250 “Partners”

Today in a Venture Capital Firm…

With stakes in over two dozen of the 

Fastest-growing “Pre-IPO” Companies.

And the rest of the lead introduces the VC partnership idea.

For a lead like this to work, your reader has to be very familiar with the offer or the person making the offer. Design wise, it should look like an invitation as this adds credibility. It should feel exclusive. And a lead like this tends to be very straightforward… an offer comes right away and the reader is okay with that because they are, as we mentioned, Most Aware—ready to buy. Because this type of lead is so straightforward, they are relatively easy to write. You’re not developing an indepth idea or hook. The hook is the invite.

Another lead to consider is The Big Promise Lead. Now, most leads include  a big promise of some sort, but this lead type makes the promise the focus of the headline and promotion.

This type of lead is best for someone who is solution aware and possibly product aware. They know they have a problem and they know there are solutions out there, so your Big Promise Lead is simply going to promise them a result they want.

Here’s an example:

Brand New Knees in 90 Days! 

Do aching joints keep you up at night?

Do you dread getting up in the morning because you know you’ll be stiff and sore?

Have you tried every kind of pill you can think of, yet still haven’t gotten the relief you need?

Do you worry that things will only get worse as time goes on?

If so, this may be the most exciting report you’ve ever seen.

You’re about to discover a breakthrough in our understanding of joint health and aging…

That could have you feeling like you’ve got brand new knees—in a matter of weeks.

The copy goes on to talk more indepth about the solution. 

Notice the headline is nothing but a big promise: brand new knees in 90 days. And the first few sentences are focused on helping the reader put their problem in context. When you do this, you are empathizing with the customer and the pains they are struggling with. Next the writer repeats the big promise… brand new knees in a matter of weeks. Notice the promotion doesn’t lead with a solution or the price or even the product because the reader isn’t ready for that. The big promise gives the writer the opportunity to develop the story that leads to sharing those things later in the copy.

By the way, it would be very easy to change this lead to a Problem/Solution Lead by simply changing the headline to the first line of the copy… Do aching joints keep you up at night? Now instead of leading with a big promise, we’re leading with a problem.

Here’s another example of a Big Promise Lead…

Collect Your $9000

ONE-DAY Payout*

*Note from Porter Stansberry:

“One of my top analysts has just uncovered a below-the-radar private equity deal that could make you $9,000 or more in 24 hours. It involves an electronic-device company that’s paying out a 51% ONE-DAY special dividend.

The only catch: You have to become a shareholder very soon… (To find out the date, see details in the brief below)”

Dear Reader,

There’s a foolproof way to collect as much as $9,000 in one single day — very soon.

As one of my top research analysts has uncovered, a private equity firm has just agreed to buy a 25% stake in a company that makes electronic devices. The secret deal includes a plan to pay out $940 million to shareholders of the company.

That amounts to a 51% one-day payout.

Again with this lead, you see a big promise. You get $9,000. The reader gets a taste of the details, but they’re not ready to buy yet. They need to know more. This lead helps us tell the story they need to hear.

The biggest mistake copywriters make with big promise leads is making a promise that’s not big enough. A small promise like “improved knees” or a “$90 pay day” would not be big enough to attract and keep readers interested. Conversely, a promise that’s too big is unbelievable. It’s not a $9 million pay day. So keep that in mind when you write a Big Promise Lead.

The next major lead type is the Problem Solution Lead. With this lead, you are showing your customer that you understand what’s happening in their world. It starts with the problem, then agitates the problem so the reader can see that we understand what they’re dealing with.

Here’s an example from the survivalist niche…

37 Food Items You Can’t Get In The 

Coming Disaster And May Not 

Survive Without…

• The first item that will fly off the shelf, (obviously it’s impossible to survive without this) so I’ll tell you exactly where to get it before the general public—and how to store it securely…

• How to practically “smell” a disaster coming, and how to lockdown your supplies or get anything you’re low on before the mob goes crazy…

• Keep your family from being attacked and robbed by buying these items before they’re “on the radar”…

Dear fellow patriot,

We need to talk. There’s some serious events about to hit the U.S.

Some you know of already, but some will be brand new in a threatening way…

The bottom-line is, any disaster (big or small) could force you to go weeks without food.

Without the essentials we may not survive. And there’s going to be no way to get them when a crisis hits (or the news even smells a crisis for that matter).

And the lead goes on. 

Notice… the copy outlines a big problem: if disaster strikes you won’t be able to get food. As far as problems go, that’s a pretty bad one. It has the potential to be a bleeding neck problem. This lead also uses secrecy and urgency to create an emotional response.

Here’s another example of a big problem lead…

No one thought it could happen in North America.

A parasite that uses your body as its personal feeding ground, taking over first your stomach, then your entire G.I. tract, forcing you to crave the foods it wants… while slowly destroying your body from the inside out.

Governments are finally admitting that this is real. Measures have been proposed in New York and the country of Mexico to try and stop it.

But by the time you read this, it may already be too late.

The copy goes on to expand on this threat to the food supply. 

Problem Solution leads are best for customers who are either unaware of the problem or aware there is a problem but they may not have figured out the specifics or whether there’s a solution at all. That’s why Problem Solution leads spend time talking about how bad the problem is. But be careful. There’s a limit to how much you can agitate the pain. If you go on too long with how bad the problem is, you may lose your reader. There’s a bit of an art to this.

The next lead type is the Secret Lead. With this lead type you are exposing information that has been held back or you are giving your reader a peek under the hood of something they don’t know about. With the secret lead, you usually don’t expose the secret until you reveal the product or solution you’re writing about. So you can go on for quite a while about the secret and why it is a secret in the first place. Here’s an example of a secret lead:

On April 24th, 2014, China will unveil a secret new financial weapon, built to bankrupt millions of Americans

A decade in the works, this unique weapon will disrupt nearly every aspect of normal American life, with potentially devastating results. Learn what you absolutely must do now to prepare and protect your family…

Later in the copy, the writer says…

How and why is this happening?

Well, it’s no secret that the United States is stuck with an enormous debt we can never realistically repay…

…and that China (by far our largest creditor, now holding nearly $1.5 TRILLION worth of loans to our federal government) is stuck with an outstanding loan they can neither get rid of nor collect.

The Chinese realize we are both trapped.

So the Chinese government is now taking a secretive and somewhat radical approach. And that’s exactly what I want to tell you about today.

Here’s another example from a financial sales letter…

The government wants to keep this to themselves…

The President’s Account

Used by at least six different U.S. Presidents, including JFK and FDR, this “IRS-exempt” account is so secret… the government restricts its advertising to the public.

Dear Reader,

Did you know that there’s an account that exists right now that:

• yields 5-6 times more than long-term CDs

• Has guaranteed returns in some cases

• Does not have to be reported to the IRS

• Can be accessed anytime without penalty

• And finally, lets you retire 100% tax-free?

It’s true.

The copy goes on from there. Notice this lead combines a secret with some big promises or benefits right off the bat. That’s a pretty good hook. 

Closely related to the secret lead is the system lead—they are really the same idea. A system is just a secret or unknown process. Or a unique mechanism your reader doesn’t know about yet, so a copywriter teases that in the lead.

These Secret or System leads are good for customers in unaware, problem aware, and solution aware stages because they help the reader to understand something about the situation they are in before they find out about the potential solution and product. They build desire where there might not have been any before. Done correctly, it can lead your reader from unaware to purchase in a single piece of copy… although it’s likely to be relatively long.

But here’s the thing… the secret or system has to be REAL. You can’t just say there’s a secret or a new system. You can’t just put a name on something ordinary and call it a system. It has to be real so when you reveal it, the reader thinks this is amazing or interesting or something I need. And not, that’s it? That’s the supposedly big secret? What a let down. 

Do that, and your reader may never trust you again.

The next type of lead is the Prediction Lead. With this lead you’re simply making an attention-getting prediction—trying to break the pattern your reader is in, and get people to take notice of something that may affect them. Prediction leads are exactly what you might think: predictions. But they have to be big enough to stand out. And the bigger the prediction, the more time you need to spend in your copy building credibility and sharing proof to make it believable. And because of that, a prediction lead can be relatively hard to write.

Here’s a prediction lead…

“It’s coming our way in the next 6 months—and no one has a clue.”

Income Extermination

Why “Safe” Investors May
Lose Everything Within 

The Next 6 Months

Dear Friend,

On June 17, 2014, the U.S. Government is going to make a move that could radically alter your retirement.

Certain stocks could drop by 80%.

Bonds and funds could drop even further.

Certain bank accounts may become almost worthless.

In other words, many investments that are popular today—and have been attracting millions of investors since the last market crash of 2008—will no longer be relevant.

Prediction leads trigger alarm or intrigue. The reader is led to wonder, will this affect me? How can I get ahead of this and avoid the consequences?

Prediction leads can work for all five awareness levels. They’re often written as news with critical information you need to know. And that affects everyone from unaware to most aware.

The last type of lead we’ll cover here is great for customers who are unaware or problem aware, but need to learn more about their pain and possible solutions before they even consider taking action—and that’s the story lead. Stories connect on a level that the other leads usually don’t get to. As humans we tend to love stories. We are programmed to listen to stories and create them when making sense of the world. They trigger feel-good hormones. They connect us to the people around us. And a good story lead can do the work of most of the other leads we’ve discussed… they can make predictions, reveal a secret or a system, make an invitation, and spell out a problem and solution.

The mistake writers often make when it comes to story leads is starting at the beginning of the story, rather than in the middle of the action. You don’t need to warm readers up with an introduction or long explanation. Just get to the action. Here’s an example of how to do it…

I couldn’t believe I was being held at gunpoint by the convenience store owner. I thought they were the ones that got held up—not the other way around. And yet, there I was, standing in an empty Quick Mart with a gun pointed at my head. The man said he was onto me —that he didn’t know exactly how, that I had to be doing something fishy — that he just simply couldn’t believe that there was any way for a person to win the lottery five times in three months. Period. Let alone from his single store.

This lead starts in the middle of the action and makes an indirect promise that intrigues the reader enough to want to keep on going. Imagine if this lead started with something like… I bought my first lottery ticket on Wednesday paying $2. And I bought another the week later as I stopped by the quick mart to fill up on gas for my truck. 

Boring. 

But starting with a gun pointed at you, that’s captivating. You want to keep reading to get some resolution to what’s going on. It’s an open loop.

If you only master one kind of lead type, make it this one. You can use a story lead to capture attention and keep the reader interested long enough to get to your offer no matter what you are writing about.

There are great stories about ingredients, algorithms, and systems. There are customer stories and founder stories and invention stories. Stories that tap into your reader’s worldview. Stories that demonstrate how products work.

Now, if you’re struggling to figure out which lead type to use, think about your reader. What stage of awareness are they in? What do they need to know in order to change their beliefs and take the action you want? How can you connect to their worldview, their current beliefs, and life situation?

Again, these leads that I’ve talked through are not an exhaustive list of all the ways you can start your message. There are many other hooks and leads to try. We’ll show you several more examples in the next two segments.