Back in 1958, Ingvar Kamprad had a bold idea.
He was opening a furniture store — and he decided to tack on a cafe as well.
The reasoning was straightforward:
Customers with full bellies might buy more furniture.
This furniture store + cafe business became quite the success. It’s called IKEA (the “IK” in the name being Kamprad’s initials) and it does about $40 billion in sales each year.
The IKEA restaurant alone does about $2 billion. But that’s not what the company cares about.
In fact, the guiding principle of the IKEA restaurant is to offer the absolute lowest price on a food item within a 30-mile radius.
IKEA doesn’t mind if it loses money here — because its köttbullar (AKA Swedish meatballs) are known as the “best sofa seller.”
Makes sense.
People wouldn’t stay in the store as long if they get nervous or hungry…
On the other hand, if they come expressly for the Swedish meatballs or cheap hot dogs (30% of IKEA customers come just for the food), they might wind up buying some throw pillows or stuffed rats or even a new lamp.
And the point of all of this is NOT that you should offer a loss leader.
Instead, it’s a simple lesson about copywriting.
In writing copy, as when selling furniture, you need a hook.
A hook is a way of sucking people in, so you can buy yourself time to do a proper selling job.
This is important when you’ve got a huge offer — thousands of separate products — like IKEA does.
But it’s just as important when you’ve got a single product, say a supplement, with multiple ingredients or benefits.
Or when your audience doesn’t know your brand as well as they know Ingvar Kamprad’s Furniture + Meatball Emporium.
So how do you write a good hook?
The basic principle is there in the story of the IKEA restaurant. If it’s not yet clear to you, don’t worry. You’ll be able to get more info on it if you take me up on the following free offer: