You’ve got a brilliant product, a stellar service, or a groundbreaking idea. So how do you get your audience to take notice? Specifically, how do you single out exactly the right visitors, and grab their attention in such a way that they just have to read on and find out more?
That’s where fascinations come in. These punchy, powerful hooks are the copywriter’s magic formula. Grab yourself a beverage, plump up the cushions, and we’ll take a closer look.
What is a fascination in copywriting?
Fascinations are short summaries, written about longer content in such a way that the reader is left with burning questions. When done right, a fascination will leave your reader feeling so curious that they just have to click to know more. It’s a classic writing technique that has generated millions in sales since they were popularised and named by Mel Martin in the 1970s. They look like this:
This one weird trick will melt your belly fat.
You won’t believe what [celebrity, e.g. Freddie ‘Parrot-Face’ Davies, or the bass player from Saxon] looks like now!
The diet secret plastic surgeons DON’T want you to know about.
If you’ve been on social media any time in the last decade, you’ve seen a lot of headlines like this. Yes, they’re silly. Yes, they can be misleading. But they serve one simple purpose: to get people who are self-conscious about their stomachs, obsessed with ‘celebrities’ that almost nobody has heard of, or worried about their eye bags to click through and find out what comes next.
Fascinations vs clickbait
When “what comes next” is spam, or malware, or plain misinformation, then attention-grabbing one-liners like this are called clickbait. And they’re horribly effective, because they play on one of the most powerful human emotions: curiosity. By piquing the reader’s interest and promising a big payoff, they lure unsuspecting souls into their virtual trap.
But what if that compelling teaser actually leads the curious reader to the information they want? That’s called a fascination. Like their dodgy clickbait cousins, fascinations hook visitors in with a big promise. Unlike clickbait, however, they actually deliver.
When to use fascinations in copywriting
Fascinations can be used to increase the click-through rate (CTR) on almost any content. However, in order to avoid it tiptoeing over the line into clickbait, we’d recommend saving this technique for when you have something truly valuable that you don’t want your audience to miss.
Take the headline of this blog post: ‘Master the Copywriter’s Magic Formula That’s Generated Millions in Sales’ That’s not a false promise, because a well-crafted fascination can power up your writing game, engage visitors and boost conversion. Fascinations have been successfully used in marketing campaigns since the 70s. It’s a copywriting technique that’s well worth mastering.
How to write an effective fascination
Like any really useful technique, writing a good fascination takes practice and preparation. Every copywriter has their own creative process, but there are certain key stages that can’t be missed. Think about the following steps for each piece of content:
- Define your audience. No single fascination is going to work on everyone who visits your website or browses your socials. And that’s okay. If you haven’t already, it’s worth putting in the work to identify the groups and subgroups you want your copy to speak to. Once you know your audience, you can get on with creating fascinations that will pull them in and not let go.
- Find the pain point. Maybe your ideal customers want to improve their golf swing, or get the most from their investments, or do more for the environment. Maybe they’re looking for the one product that will make their daily lives easier, or the right advisor who’ll guide them through a difficult decision. Perhaps they do urgently need to find out what Saxon’s Steve Dawson looks like now.
- Find the value. Once you know that pain point, you can match the pain point to the value – what value will your reader gain from your content? List the useful knowledge that’ll be picked up by reading it. Which of those will best match your target audience?
- Tease the value. Now, rewrite the valuable knowledge into something that gives just a taste of what they will learn, without giving it away. This is the step that creates curiosity. There are many ways to do that, and we’ll run through four of them below.
- State the benefit. When they discover the value that you’ve teased, how will that benefit them? The more specific the benefit, the better. For example “Earn an extra £6k per week” is more compelling than “Earn more money”
- Concise, compelling clarity. Don’t use a five-syllable word if you can do it in one. Don’t lard your copy with adverbs or take the scenic route to the point. You know all this anyway, but the ultra-short fascination format makes it even more important to keep your copy simple.
- Go bigger. If your product delivers, then your copy should deliver hard. Why merely “improve” your golf game when you can “power it up”? Why “make more money” when you can “maximise returns”? Why “minimise your carbon footprint” when you can “help save the planet”? This is no time for subtlety. The more vivid your imagery, the more effective your hook. And finally …
- Don’t settle for version 1.0. Fascinations are challenging to write because every single word has to count. Rewrite, rethink, and refine until you find just the right formula. Don’t be afraid to overdeliver: that’s the secret of the world’s top copywriters. If you’re aiming for 5 fascinations, write 25. Aiming for 10? Write 50. You get the idea.
Examples of fascinations
There are countless ways to write a fascination, and here we share four of our favourites. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into the different mechanisms, Eddie Shleyner’s Transformational Landing Pages course** contains 37 short lessons on crafting fascinations and is well worth checking out. Here are a few to get you started:
1. The ‘number’ fascination
How many tips does your article contain? How much did your revenue increase when you used this technique? Can you turn it into a percentage? Writing a number fascination can be as simple as counting up what you’re delivering, listing it all out, and deciding which number looks the most impressive/intriguing. Alternatively, you can combine it with another filter.
Number fascination example:
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2. The ‘direct benefit’ fascination
When your benefit is an absolute showstopper, come right out and say it. If you’re promising something unique and noteworthy, this style of fascination prompts you to shout about it.
Direct benefit fascination example:
3. The ‘are you…?’ fascination
What type of person would be most in need of your article? What problem are they suffering with? Call that out in your fascination and let your reader self-select by clicking to learn more.
‘Are you…?’ fascination example:
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4. The ‘if…then…’ fascination
Another way to call out the reader who needs to hear this. Plug your value and benefits into this fascination formula and let the right readers spot themselves.
‘If…then…’ fascination example:
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Fascinations: they’re hard, but they work
A great fascination reads effortlessly, but getting to ‘great’ involves blood, sweat, tears, and a lot of swearing at the computer. Why go through all that when you could write something much easier, like a thousand-word blog post, or a three-hundred-page epic about the Industrial Revolution?
The answer is simple. Fascinations pay off. The whole point of content creation is to attract the right customers, and fascinations do more than just attract them. They practically grab them by the collar and drag them through the door. And their targeted appeal means they’ll help filter out the people you don’t want, too: the time-wasters, the corner-cutters, the plain bad fits.
Are you fascinated by fascinations? Or wondering if the ones you have are working for you? Book a free content review or drop us a line, and we’ll create a plan that’ll really entice your readers.
**That’s an affiliate link, and we’d only use one of those for things we truly think are worth having. Ang took the course and loved it.
