Top marketers claim they don’t use it.

Most people think it’s a dirty word.

Many are convinced they’d never fall for that sh*t!

And you might even think it’s completely wrong, unethical and borderline being a scam.

Let’s talk about hype, and whether it’s a con…

Or just a clever hook!

TL;DR? I explain all in this video!

Hype… Is It a Dirty Word?

Ok first of all… what is hype, what does it actually mean?

I personally like the definition… it’s using something extraordinary that’s on the edge of ordinary to really emphasise the amazing benefit of what’s on offer!

In other words, ‘bigging it up’!

The thing is, hype is often considered a dirty word and while many top marketers claim they don’t use it, or you shouldn’t use it, they’re either plain wrong, or just lying… believe me, they’re often just as ‘guilty’ as the next man.

But is it a bad thing?

Is it ok to use hype at the right time, the right place and on the right delivery medium?

Well, I’m going to stick my neck out here and tell you it is…

Sometimes, you need to ‘hype it up’ to sell stuff, because you just won’t sell anything if you don’t!

The Problem With Hype

The problem really comes with hype when it’s used dishonestly and marketers don’t back it up with their offer.

It’s such a stupid thing to do because, rather than increasing conversions, when someone feels duped, it inevitably just puts them off, driving them away for good, never to return.

However, as I always say, if you’ve got a great product or service that people will actually benefit from…

You’re actually doing them a massive disservice if you can’t get them to have it, so hyping it up, or ‘bigging it up’ is actually the right thing to do.

Let me give you an example.

Say you had a cure for cancer.

If no-one believes you, it’s no good to anybody.

So in order to get people to actually benefit from it, you’d have to do whatever it takes to get them to believe it was real.

Now if that involved painting the absolute best possible image in their minds to get them to believe it, so be it!

If It’s Fine in a Social Context Why Not Use it in Marketing?

Consider this…

If hype was used in a social context, i.e. removing plastics from the sea or something like that, you’d expect the messaging to be hyped up to get people to be active, engaged and fully on board to take action.

So why shouldn’t you use it in marketing if you’ve got a product or service that’ll actually make people’s lives better?

It makes sense right?

However, you’ll often hear, even from rich and successful marketers, things like, “no-one falls for hype these days, you need to be more authentic if you want to sell… you need to tell it like it is.”

In fact most people, if you ask them about hyped-up sales messages would say, “I’d never fall for that sh*t!”

Which of course is all very admirable, accept… it’s not true.

They do!

And those guru marketing types telling you not to use it, often still do in their own marketing because they know it works!

You see, used properly, as long as it’s what I call ethical hype (which I realise might sound a bit of an oxymoron), hype can be incredibly powerful and get fantastic results that you might not necessarily get otherwise!

Now before we go any further, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you shouldn’t sell with authenticity and telling it like it is.

Without doubt, if you’re building a brand and want to sell over time, too much over-the-top hypey copy will almost certainly damage your reputation and be detrimental to your image, so keeping it authentic, real and realistic for everyone you’re trying to reach is definitely the way to go.

But again, if you’ve got a fantastic product or service that people will truly benefit from, used correctly, at the right time, with the right delivery medium, ethical hype might well be the only way you get people to have it, so should definitely use it when necessary.

Why Hype Works

When I started ghost-writing for a multi-millionaire marketer here in the UK back in 2011, I wrote a couple of sales letters with absolutely massive claims in the headlines.

These claims were BIG, hypey promises that, if you asked most people, would say were well beyond their reach!

However, despite this, these letters pulled in well over £2,000,000 ($2,500,000) each!

There were fundamentally two reasons they were so successful.

Firstly, because they were delivered by direct mail, in other words, physical paper mailings though the post (I’ll explain why that’s significant in a moment).

And secondly, and more importantly, because the copy appeared credible, the customers felt ‘there had to be something in it’…

If they could only achieve a tenth of what was being claimed, it’d still make a massive difference to their lives so they were quite happy to take the risk.

Now your first thoughts might well be… “ah there we are then, no-one uses direct-mail anymore, it’s all done on the internet”.

Well, that’s not strictly true.

Direct-mail is still very much alive and there are marketers absolutely killing it, especially as, you’re right, most marketing is done online, so the ones using direct-mail are cleaning up.

But even online, this second reason still applies just as much today as it did when I started out.

It’s just human nature.

If a massive promise is believable that SOMEONE is actually achieving it, many people feel, if they could just aspire to a fraction of it, it’d be worth their while having a crack at it themselves!!

Now the reason this works so well for direct-mail is because in general, you’re only getting one chance at selling your product or service at a time.

Yes of course you might well run follow up campaigns or even multiple mailings of a sales letter, but unlike building a brand, you’re trying to get results straight away with each mailing, so you need to make a BIG impression that’s too good to ignore on every mailshot!

This is particularly relevant if you’re writing to a ‘cold’ audience, i.e. they don’t know you or they’re not on your personal mailing list.

Basically a big hypey headline grabs attention in a way that more authentic headlines just wouldn’t.

But Wouldn’t Most People Just Bin It?

Funnily enough, a 2 to 4% conversion rate can be considered a good result with direct mail and so you might well argue that if the majority of people, 96 to 98% chuck it, hype doesn’t work here either.

But the reality is, 2 to 4% can lead to fantastic profits and those that bin it, would do so regardless, whether it’s hyped up or not, because they’re just not interested in the offer.

However, those who are receptive to this kind of marketing, will either be interested straight away, or curious enough to come back to it and think about buying another time…

But they won’t just forget it.

In other words the hype will have tweaked their interest and they’ll want to find out more, either now or later.

But here’s the thing, these customers wouldn’t be interested in your product or service at all, if you hadn’t grabbed their attention with hype in the first place.

So ‘bigging it up’ to grab the attention of a SMALLER portion of potential customers, that can lead to fantastic profits, is better than not using hype, and grabbing the attention of no-one at all!

Believe it or not, a very real world example of what I’m talking about is on Youtube.

While not direct-mail obviously, the principles of grabbing attention, especially to an audience who don’t know you, still apply.

Check out videos on YouTube and you’ll often find those with the hypiest titles and thumbnails (especially in the make-money niche) get by far the most views, way more than even those put out by some of the top marketing guys in the world!

Of course, whether they deliver with the content is another story, but viewers just can’t help being curious when they see hyped up messages in the thumbnails for the first time!

And What About Clickbait?

Clickbait could be considered an example of hype and while frowned upon, people still use it to get thousands of views on their videos.

Many of course will be garbage and the viewer will just click away but savvy creators who create engaging, worthwhile content at the outset can turn a clickbaity type title/thumbnail into a video that can be really useful to their audience and therefore grow their channel.

Now, I’m not suggesting using clickbait by the way, I’m just making the point that, grabbing attention with a BIG promise can be incredibly effective, especially if you can back it up with worthwhile content that delivers!

This also applies to a sales letter.

A hypey headline is all well and good for the right time, right product, right medium, etc but if the rest of the copy is garbage, especially the stuff that comes after the headline, then it’s a complete waste of everybody’s time.

The key is to follow a hypey headline with slick, engaging copy that draws the reader in and they’re just compelled to find out what it’s all about.

Hype is All Around Us

Other places you’ll come across hypey headlines and sales copy is on affiliate platforms like The Warrior Forum or Clickbank.

Once again, there’s an awful lot of garbage floating around on these but there are also some extremely successful hypey sales letters that make an absolute fortune for their vendors…

So don’t always assume that hype is a bad thing!

Bottom line…

We live in a cynical world where there’s just so much BS on the internet, and although we all believe we’re savvy enough to see through it…

When a hypey message is well written and comes across as professional and not just written by a ‘Mickey Mouse’ chancer, we’re all capable of being drawn in to find out if something really is as good as it’s claimed to be.

It’s why curiosity is the ultimate pull factor in headlines!

Hype = Curiosity

If something almost seems too good to be true but not immediately clear how it’s possible, many of us are often just compelled to find out whether, whatever it is could work for us!

Another time when hype is perfectly acceptable to use is if you’re offering a full money back guarantee, especially a no-quibble money-back guarantee.

Again it comes down to the quality of what you’re offering.

If the customer is going to genuinely get benefit from your product or service, and once they’ve got it, they feel they got value for money, and don’t feel ripped off, because they know the product or service is actually going to help them in some way…

BUT if it doesn’t, they can get their money back…

Then the fact that it was a hypey message that got them to buy will all be forgiven.

In fact, even when they realise it was a hypey message that made them buy, if the product or service is so good, but no longer usable if they ask for a refund – i.e. sending a product back or dissallowing access to software for example…

They won’t want want their money back because they know they’ll be missing out on the benefits they’ve now got access to.

Do you see?

The thing is, hype, although people frown upon it and marketers won’t admit to using it, it’s everywhere.

From car ads that show the glamourous model or the chisel jawed adonis driving along fantastic roads through beautiful scenery, to full on how to make a million dollar ads while sitting on the toilet, they’re all using hype to paint a picture of the best possible outcome that’s possible when using what’s on offer!

There’s nothing wrong with it as long as the offer is decent.

Unfortunately, it’s not hype that’s the problem in internet marketing, it’s the lies that go with it!

And Now a Quick Gripe About YouTube

While we’re on that subject of lying, just before I wrap up, I talked about hype on YouTube earlier and how it can be used as clickbait etc.

Sometimes these videos really piss me off.

Don’t get me wrong, I love YouTube.

But some of the videos on making money are so dishonest, that I do feel they should be considered an actual scam…

Not because of the subject… after all it’s the niche I’ve been involved in for the last 14 years or so that’s not the issue.

What really gets my goat is the way some, not all, YouTubers imply they’re making ‘$10,000 a month’ say, using some obscure method like surveys or drop shipping using some random piece of ‘free automated software’, that sort of thing.

Crap basically!

It’s clearly not how they’re making money themselves.

It’s just garbage they’re putting out and conning their audience into thinking they’re raking it in so they can sell products, or set up agencies or whatever, on how they’re now experts and can sell their services to you on how they did it.

Because their videos get loads of views, based on lies, they can use it to build a social media following and then ‘sell’ the ‘how they did it’ using these obscure methods to make money…

Except it’s not how they did it!!!

The real way they make money is by selling how they ‘allegedly’ did it, and not by the methods they’re actually selling!

I hope that makes sense.

Now don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with selling how you did it if you actually walked the walk and genuinely had success with what you’re promoting.

Or even promoting stuff that you don’t do yourself…

As long as it’s real, genuine and proven.

For example, the big boys, top marketers like Alex Hormozi, Frank Kern, Russell Brunson and so on…

These guys have made millions using what they actually teach, so without a doubt, they’ve earnt the right to sell their ‘how they did it’ type stuff.

But they’ll also promote other people’s stuff that they KNOW is good… and real… and genuine.

These guys are definitely worth listening to.

But some spotty little teenager telling you how to make a gazillion dollars using their special ‘never seen before’ methods, when they’ve clearly got no experience of business in the real world… nope, not for me!

Sidenote: I even came across one video where a young lad was promoting how he allegedly makes serious money dropshipping and in his ‘tutorial’ he talked about, if you haven’t got testimonials, that’s ok, just make them up!

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

It’s effectively fraud.

DO NOT make testimonials up!

Anyway, my point is, be very aware of the BS.

Don’t confuse it with hype that’s backed up by genuine quality, value and a decent offer that really can make a difference.

Hype used ethically is nothing more than a good hook, and there’s nothing wrong with that.