In every media format you always start an advertorial by researching what is currently top of mind for your prospects.
Then you brainstorm how you will connect those top of mind thoughts to your potential solution.
And what thoughts are those?
Their fears, frustrations, and wishes.
How To Come Up With Winning Advertorial Hooks
First let’s dissect the “hook” from a real life winning advertorial.

I am not theorizing about this Advertorial.
I have first hand knowledge from my employment with Legacy Research about how successful this advertorial was.
It made millions.
So successful that even major media outlets have tried copying the angle.
The angle “Man Who Predicted Trump Victory…” is a great example of attracting readers with a topic of extreme current interest.
It’s magnetic to the haters and the lovers.
At the time of publishing, Trump had just became the new president of the United States. It was a shocking win, and whether you are for him or against him, his name was on your mind in some way.
Their target customer is a 45+ white male who is trying to protect their money from a government they fear and seek alternative views from the mainstream media.
When Trump won, a lot of people were thinking about what does this mean for my job, my investments, my properties. If you were an investor at the time, anything about Trump and predictions was a strong attention draw.
That’s where you start with an advertorial…
Every Advertorial Starts With Conceptualizing What Will Draw The Attention of Your Target Customer
What is on the minds of EVERYONE in your market.
What topic, word, person, place, or thing would everyone in your space instantly recognize. Think about the reaction if you yell “FIRE” in a crowd.
That’s the kind of head snapping reaction you need to entice.
Forget about laws, network compliance, or writing techniques right now. Just focus on what would get attention.
Of course we are going to bring it back to being legal, compliant, and technique mastery.
First get attention.
Then after you have the attention grab, you start thinking about the sentence structure, legal responsibilities, and ad network compliance.
You start connecting the attention grabbing topic with the reason why they will want to buy your product.
For creating the reason why to buy, I like to start out with a simple little fill in the blanks exercise…