O.C. Writers

By Robert Scanlon from Amazon Ad School // 

How on earth can you persuade a potential reader to part with their hard-earned cash, when you only have 150 characters available?

That’s the challenge for anyone running “Custom Ads” with Amazon Advertising.

Fortunately, sales copywriters have been tackling this issue since time immemorial, so authors can take a powerful leaf from the book of what works. 

1. Hook Into Their Minds

There’s a concept in Gestalt Therapy called “unfinished business.” If it remains unresolved, it can drive behavior.

We use the same concept to create tension in ads by leaving something left undone.

This is otherwise known as: “The Cliffhanger.”

Done well, we can help to fill a casual book browser with feline-level curiosity.

The idea here is to hook into the mind of the reader and present them with a story that cannot be completed…

Unless they click the Buy Button read the book, of course. 

2. Problems, Problems, Problems

“A story in only 150 characters?!”

We feel your pain.

Remember the famous six-word story?

Credited to Ernest Hemingway, the challenge was to write a complete story in six words.

Hemingway’s supposed example was:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

That’s only 33 characters!

Of course, in this example, we’re presented with a “complete” story (we know how it ends).

Now the challenge is to leave the reader wanting to know HOW it ends.

So we cut the ending.

She put the baby shoes up for sale. But she must protect the secret that kept them unworn…

Now we’re at 90 characters. Plenty of room to move before we hit that 150 limit!

But we still need more oomph.

Here’s how we can get creative by introducing problems for your Main Character (MC).

In your story, your MC wants something / is about to commence a huge undertaking / is facing an insurmountable problem.

This will help make your cliffhanger more exciting.

She had no choice but to sell the unworn baby shoes in secret. But when her sister spies the ad, the fallout could tear her family apart.

 (137 characters. Our story grows.)

Now our brains can’t help but ask a few questions.

Why were the shoes unworn and why get rid of them in secret?

Why is it such a massive problem for her sister to see the ad?

We’re posing unanswered questions for the reader – and this is the key skill in writing compelling ad copy.

We’ll show you a trick to doing this shortly… 

3. Be Specific

We’ve all heard The Movie Guy’s voiceover: “But just as he started, everything changed…”

But without the booming voice, and relying purely on text, this is too vague.

We want very specific issues to increase the excitement factor.

He tearfully put the unworn baby shoes up for sale. But he’d barely clicked “submit” when the death threats began.

(114 characters. Still 36 power spots left!)

These very particular high stakes make the story feel both real and emotional at the same time.

4. There Is An Irresistible Force

In the example above, we leave the reader intrigued as to who is threatening to kill the MC and why. But we can make this even more problematic by making the dangers sound unbeatable.

Putting the unworn baby shoes up for sale tore his heart in two. But he never expected the painful ad would land him on death row.

 (130 characters. Gulp. We’d better keep things tight with those last 20!)

This time, we make the danger very real, and as high stakes as the plot allows.

Fairly obviously, it will depend on the genre.

Romance, for example, should have the cliffhanger revolving around love.

Tragedy brought them together. Now these two lost souls must bare their hearts, or risk losing a forever love.

(110 characters. Well done!)

But in truth, there’s a super-effective trick to improving almost any ad copy.

Want to know what it is? 

5. The Power of the Question

You guessed it: ask a question at the end.

And now your novel is truly left undone, since the potential reader has a question rattling around in their head.

It’s human nature to want to answer a question, if only subconsciously.

Think about ads on TV.

“Are you sick and tired of stubborn stains?”

Why do they say that instead of “Stains on clothes can be stubborn to dislodge?”

Because it hooks the viewer into unconsciously answering the question.

It’s even more effective if the question is not a yes/no answer, but open-ended:

Evil is on the march. But with a rag-tag crew and a handful of rusty weapons, how can he possibly defeat an army of thousands?

 (126 characters. We’ll pat ourselves on the back for coming in under budget.)

This time the reader wants to answer the question alongside us: Yes, how? How will he stop the darkness consuming them all?

Try turning every hook into a question and notice the extra firepower it adds.

 In Conclusion

Become a student of short-form sales copy.

It will help you to study good newspaper headlines (on and offline).

Those clickworthy titles are penned by experienced sub-editors whose job it is to grab eyeballs… and quickly.

But here’s the essence of what any copywriter needs to do: set up an unresolved conflict in the reader’s mind.

And make sure the only way they can scratch that itch is to buy your bestseller!

Coming Soon!

 

Want to get help selling more books through better Amazon Ads? Join our upcoming 5-Day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge, a free community course with tons of support. Click and Register to join the upcoming event: https://bryancohen.lpages.co/jan21

 

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ROBERT SCANLON is a writer and contributor at Amazon Ad School.