How to Inject Curiosity Into Your Copywriting with the “Blind Tease”

Yesterday I did a consultation with a writer named Sue.

Sue runs a weekly webinar about “3 blogging myths” where she sells her high end “how to blog” course. During our discussion she asked what she should say in her emails to get more people on the webinar.

My reply:

“Use the ‘blind tease.'”

The blind tease is a copywriting technique where you drop tantalizing hints to the reader without giving away the secret.

When you do the blind tease right, your readers get so curious they can’t resist the chance to find out more.

Old school copywriters like the late Gary Halbert are masters of this technique.

Halbert once wrote a teaser in a promotion for Entrepreneur Magazine that went:

“FAKE COCAINE: a legal substitute that fools almost everyone!”

And a year later they were still getting replies.

In Sue’s case, she has a great story about a blogger who is getting more than 1 million page views a month but making just $750.

So I said:

Fantastic. Now write an email about that blogger, and how she’s struggling financially because she bought into a huge myth about blogging. This myth is one that many bloggers fall prey to. And when you finally break free from this lie, you can turn $750 a month into a full-time income. And… You’ll tell them all about it on your webinar this Saturday.

See how intriguing this approach can be?

Dang, even I want to know, but I forgot to ask Sue what the 3 myths are.

Might have to jump on that webinar myself…

Josh Earl

P.S. I’m not taking copywriting clients right now, but I do occasionally make myself available for one-hour consults like the one I did with Sue.

These sessions are a great way to get your head straight on a specific problem, or sort through a jumble of to-do items and find the one thing you should focus on now.

The fee for this is $250. Interested?

Contact me now and I’ll send you the details.

Related posts:

  1. How to Turn a One-Time JV into an Ongoing Revenue Stream My favorite thing about affiliate marketing is how you can use it to fill in gaps in your own product line. Example: At Simple Programmer, we don’t yet have a product aimed specifically at freelance software developers. I’d like to create a freelancing course, but this is a relatively small...
  2. Learning Copywriting: Who Are the Top Copywriters A ‘Copy Cub’ Should Study? One of my clients, Andrew, runs a biz in the mortgage marketing niche. After reading these emails for the last few months, Andrew realized that the ability to write good copy for his business is one of the highest value skills he could possess. He asks: ~~~ Would you mind...
  3. Learning Copywriting: What’s The Right Mix of Study vs. Practice? Recently I critiqued a landing page for a client named Jeff, and it was one of those good news/bad news scenarios. The writing was pretty good… but NOT for a landing page. I gave Jeff a homework assignment to study Gary Bencivenga’s amazing “Fresh-Pressed Olive Oil Club.” Jeff buckled down...
  4. How to Speed Up Your Copywriting by Avoiding ‘The Wall’ Back when I was apprenticing under my slave-driving copywriting mentor, one of the tasks he saddled me with was writing dozens of promo emails for a client of his in the chiropractic niche. Here’s a scenario that would play out over and over: I’d be working on a tight deadline....