The Opening Paragraph

The Opening Paragraph

The opening paragraph is really just a continuation of your headline. You’ve just grabbed your reader by the throat and dragged him into your copy. So imagine you do this and then lead into something like…

Dear Friend:

Can I have a moment of your time to show you…

Please! This approach has killed more ad copy than Al Capone has killed federal agents. Once you’ve captured your reader’s attention, you want to keep it.

Let’s take a look at my Honest Income Program sales copy’s opening paragraph and see how I continued from where I began.

I was out of work...out of luck...and out of money. If I had a gun in the house, I would have put it to my head and slowly squeezed the trigger...

I lost my job due to illness...had bills up to my neck...a daughter who would soon be entering college—and no hope in sight.

If you’re sitting there right now thinking to yourself — “My God he’s talking about ME!” — Don’t give up hope!

Take a look at how I weaved in this opening paragraph. I’m basically saying the same thing that I said in the headline, just in different words. The key here is that I am beginning my story in a way that grabs the reader’s attention even more. No “Dear Friend” or “From The Desk Of” or any of that garbage. The one thing that you need to understand as a copywriter is that you MUST make every word count. If you read a line and it doesn’t make you feel something, then get rid of it. Your reader has a limited attention span. You can’t waste time on flowery prose.

Basically, here are the things that you want your opening paragraphs to do. They don’t have to contain all of these items, but they should at least contain one or two.

Method 1 – The Compelling Story

Tell them a compelling true story that they can relate to as I have done in my copy. This is especially effective if your headline is using the same technique as mine did. Usually you do want to keep the headline and opening paragraph similar so that one flows into the other. For that matter, your whole sales copy should flow smoothly.

Method 2 – The Compelling Offer

Make a compelling offer. Hit them with your offer right off the bat. No need to beat around the bush. If you’re offering them a year of mentoring for the cost of a dinner out, then tell them that right in the first sentence. The key to this opening is to follow up with the details and the benefits of your offer.

Method 3 – The Question

Ask them a question and force them to answer it. For example, you might ask something like “Would you like to increase your profits by 817% in just 30 days?” Naturally, the answer to this is going to be yes. In order for them to find out how to do this, they’ll have to read the rest of the copy.

Method 4 – The Guarantee

Put your guarantee right up front. For example, you might say something like this. “I’ll give you triple your money back if my acne cream doesn’t cure your acne in 3 days or less.” This does more than one thing. First of all, it states that the person’s acne will be cured, which is what they are looking for. What it also does is take all the risk away from the customer. If they’re not satisfied with the results, you’ve promised to give them triple their money back. It’s hard to pass up an offer like that.

Method 5 – The Testimonial

If your headline is a testimonial, you can use a similar testimonial in your opening paragraph. I wouldn’t use the same exact one because testimonials should be kept intact, word for word. So if you’re going to use this method, choose a different testimonial for your opening paragraph. You might even want to follow it up with more testimonials. We’ll get more into testimonials and where to put them later on in the book.

The key to the opening paragraph is that you want it to have the same impact as the headline. The only real difference is the formatting.

The next step is the sub-heads and the rest of copy that follows.