Curiosity and Marketing
Today I received an email from the Entrepreneur Magazine Store with the subject line… “6 Useful Things You Never Knew You Needed.”
Yup, I clicked on it.
Do you know why?
Curiosity.
If you can build curiosity into your headlines and subject lines, you’ll get more clicks and more reads.
But how do you create curiosity?
That’s what I wanted to know, so started Googling and found myself reading about something Carnegie Mellon psychologist George Loewenstein calls the “Curiosity Gap.”
Essentially the curiosity gap is when you discover that you’re missing some valuable knowledge.
For example, you read a subject line, blog post title, headline or call to action and you realize you don’t know what’s on the other side. This creates a sort of pain, and to relieve the pain you’ve got to click through and discover what you’re missing.
A follow up study from Caltech shows that curiosity increases to a point as knowledge increases, but then drops off.
It’s the lack of information that creates curiosity, and when a sufficient amount of information is received, curiosity decreases.
Let’s Make a Deal
Ages ago there was a television show called, “Let’s Make a Deal.” People would dress up in weird costumes and sit in the audience, hoping the host would notice them and ask them to play the game.
When a contestant played, among other silly things they were asked to choose box a, b or c, or maybe doors 1, 2 or 3. There could be awesome stuff in those boxes or behind those doors, or it could be total junk.
It was this curiosity gap that kept people watching, because they, too, had to know what was hiding behind the doors and whether or not the contestant chose correctly.
And those doors and boxes kept coming, too, so that it created a continuous rollercoaster of needing to know, finding out and then needing to know all over again.
The show was silly, stupid and yet HIGHLY addictive.
Here’s everything you need to create curiosity on demand:
- To make someone curious, create a gap between what they know and what they want to know.
- To maintain that curiosity, drip out the information a bit at a time without giving away too much too fast.
Okay, that might be a slight oversimplification, but let’s look as some examples of how you might do this:
You can begin telling a story, pause at a climactic moment and delay the conclusion of the story until later – sometimes MUCH later.
“As I hung in the air, my sweaty hands slipping off the concrete ledge, all I could think of was the sound my body would make when it slammed into the sidewalk 10 stories below.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, let’s talk about…”
You might connect two things that don’t make sense or provide an unexpected outcome.
“How to double your sales page conversion rate using apple cider vinegar and a camera.”
You can withhold information for a period of time.
“I’m going to reveal the exact 3 words that will make any man fall in love with you. But before I do, I need to tell you a story…”
And you might introduce something new that the reader’s existing knowledge or previous experiences cannot explain.
“Instead of paying for traffic, get paid up front to drive traffic to your own website and your own offers.”
Okay, seriously, I know I just made this last one up, but I need someone right now to figure out how this works because somehow it sounds like it could and I am SUPER curious about it, too. Aren’t you?
A Few Tips for Creating Curiosity
Keep a curiosity swipe file. Anytime a headline or first sentence provokes your own curiosity, copy and paste it into the file.
Make your information personally relevant. “The Secret Ingredient to Killer Brownies” is interesting, but “You will make the best brownies of your life with this secret ingredient” is more personal.
Offer the promise of something worthwhile to the reader.
Use visuals to create mystery and curiosity.
Be different – don’t use material easily found elsewhere.
Make the information tease interesting, enticing, eye-opening. If you can get them to ask, “What’s this??” and click, you’ve done your job.
Why is Curiosity Important to Your Marketing?
- It increases clicks in your emails.
- It gets people reading and consuming your stuff.
- It increases engagement on social media.
- It increases share on social media.
- It gets people reading and consuming your stuff (Yes, I repeated that one. Can you guess why?)
Oh yes, and one more thing…
Curiosity BUILT Apple
Steve Jobs was a MASTER at exploiting curiosity. He would hint about a new product, leak a product prototype and then embargo all official information between the demo and the product release.
People would go crazy with their own interpretations and speculations. They would discuss the new product on social media and create so much buzz, Apple had millions of people ready to buy before the product was even released.
Curiosity and the Stripper
If all you remember about creating curiosity is this, it will be enough to vastly improve your marketing skills:
Imagine two strippers. I leave it to you to fill in the blanks here.
Can you see the two strippers in your mind? Okay, have one stripper immediately remove all of his/her clothing. Ta-da! No build up, no curiosity, it’s all there for you to see. Realize this person isn’t a stripper, they’re an exhibitionist. ~yawn~
Now imagine the second stripper taking 20 minutes to remove his or her clothing. 20 minutes of teasing. 20 minutes of anticipation. 20 minutes of wondering which article of clothing is coming off next and what – if anything – is beneath it.
You already know what I’m going to ask… which one of these strippers did you essentially ignore, and which one did you pay attention to for 20 minutes?
In marketing don’t be an exhibitionist, be a stripper.
You might write that down and post it where you can see it. Then again, if you have a spouse, you might want to explain it before they find it.