The success of a funnel is only dependent on these three things … Hook, Story, Offer. Having any two of these without the third, is the difference between having successful funnel or it being a flop.

Having a great hook and story with a poor offer, means people won’t buy what you are selling. Similarly, having a great offer and story with a poor hook, means people wont even get to see your offer.

Let’s break it down further. Your funnel needs to have a Hook, Story, Offer at a macro level (i.e. the funnel) and a micro level (i.e. ads and pages). We’ll use the business coaching example from previous blogs to illustrate this.

At a macro level, the main hook is the initial attention grabbing headline, image or video used in the ad(s) to drive traffic to the funnel. The main story is what you tell the people across all the pages in the funnel. Then finally, the offer is the high-ticket item that you would ideally like people to buy, so the coaching program in this case.

At a micro level, the same principles apply. Every ad or page also needs to have its own Hook, Story, Offer. Look at it this way, at every step something is being exchanged for something else with more perceived value.

Let’s look at the ad first. The purpose of the ad is to drive traffic to the funnel. So the ad needs to have a great hook which is either an attention grabbing headline, image or video. This has to stop people in their tracks when they are scrolling through Facebook, for instance, or searching for something on Google. People’s attention span online is 7 seconds or less, so it needs to be beyond good. The ad also needs to tell a story and provide an offer, so that the person clicks on the ad to proceed to the funnel. The story could be about how the coaching program has changed peoples lives or had a positive impact on their business. The offer here is that the person will be entitled to a free online assessment. The exchange is that opportunity for a click on the ad.

Now that people have clicked on the ad, they land on the “squeeze page” page. Once again an attention grabbing headline and a story must be told to get the person to submit their details for the free online assessment, which is the offer on that page. The exchange is access to the free online assessment for personal details (e.g. name, email, phone number).

The same applies on the “sales page”. An attention grabbing headline and story must be told to promote the benefits of purchasing the Detailed Action Plan Report for $150. The offer must be presented in a “value stack” to illustrate the “value” the person will get for the “price” they pay. Remember the value should always be 10 times the price. So it includes the value of the report plus the value of all bonus material supplied. The exchange here is $1,500 of value for $150 cash.

Finally we get to the one time offer (OTO) page. It’s no different, an attention grabbing headline and story must be told to promote the benefits of purchasing the Coaching Program for $500. The offer once again must be presented in a “value stack” to illustrate the “value” the person will get for the “price” they pay. So it must include the value of the coaching program plus the value of all bonus material supplied. The exchange here is $5,000 of value for $500 cash, for the special limited one time offer of 50% off the program.

That illustrates and explains the importance of Hook, Story, Offer. We can highly recommend that you read Russell Brunson’s book Expert Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Creating a Mass Movement of People Who Will Pay for Your Advice where he covers these concepts in a lot more detail.