How to Create Curiosity & Compel Your Prospects to Take Action

Copywriting great Joe Sugarman says that his headlines have only one goal: to get you to read the first sentence.

And the purpose of the first sentence? To get you to read the second.  And so on. By the end of the first paragraph, you’re fully caught up in the momentum of the ad.

You may have heard this referred to as the “greased slide”.  Your goal is to build momentum throughout your copy.  By the end, your prospect should be frantically digging his credit card out, eager to pay top dollar for your services.

As you may know, getting your prospect onto that greased slide requires a strong, benefit-driven headline. But truly great headlines do more than just promise a benefit.  Great headlines—the kinds that make millions of dollars in sales– arouse a burning curiosity in the reader. A curiosity so intense that they have no choice but to keep reading.

3 Curiosity-Creating Questions to Use in Your Headlines

Think of your headline as the first push onto that greased slide. A good headline stops the reader dead in his tracks.  A good headline creates a mental “hiccup” that break the reader’s train of thought.  And a good headline should get them to ask a question in their head.

This question may be “How does that work?” It may be “What’s in it for me?”  Or that question can even be “Uh-Oh.  Do I need to worry about this?”  The best headlines use all of those questions.

Here’s an example: “How to Craft Killer Headlines in 3 Easy Steps”

There are three “curiosity” questions raised by that headline.   First, you wonder, “How does that work?” You want to know, so you keep reading. Second, you ask—possibly, subconsciously—“What’s that going to do for me?” And third, you may have asked a version of “Do I need to worry about this?” in the form of “Do I know this already?” or “What if I don’t know this?”

The combination of those three questions creates a compelling curiosity in the reader.  If you’re part of the target market, you’re likely to read on.  And once that happens, you’re already halfway down that greased slide we talked about earlier.

The Hidden Danger of Curiosity Headlines

However, there is one caveat to using curiosity in your headlines: You must always tie curiosity to a market-specific benefit.  That’s because curiosity alone won’t get someone to read your ad.

That’s why I started this 3-article series with “Finding the Big Benefit”.  Knowing your prospects—and their emotional motivators—is the key to creating those benefits.  And if you don’t have a big benefit tied to your curiosity question, your headline will probably be a dud.

Of course, it your headline fails, your chances of getting your prospects on that greased slide are slim-to-none.  They won’t even step onto the playground, let alone climb up the ladder, and they certainly won’t sit on the slide and wait for you to push them.

So remember: always combine a strong curiosity-arousing question with an equally strong promise of a big benefit.  Your readers will happily run up the ladder and get on the slide.  And you won’t even have to push them.  They’ll do it all themselves.

– Paul