In the last article, we learnt about the importance of a good headline in copywriting. We saw how it acts as the front door to your copy, and if the door is monotonous, no one is going to open it, even if a mansion lies behind.
In this part, you’ll get familiar with “The Slippery Slope Technique”: its concept, the basic rules, and the Bucket Brigades.
So without further ado, let us begin.
The Concept of the Slippery Slope
Ever heard of Joseph Sugarman?
No? Don’t worry. He was a famous direct-response copywriter who laid this foundational truth down about writing successful copy:
The sole purpose of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence.
While headlines are important in getting a reader to open your copy, the subsequent steps they take depend solely on what kind of content you’ve written, line after line.
If your opening paragraph is as bland as tea without sugar, newsflash: you’re not going to be able to retain them for long.
Coming back to Sugarman, he was also the one who compared great copy to a children’s slide.
I’ll explain.
Consider your headline to be the ladder to the slide. The reader steps onto it and reaches the very top. Then comes the first sentence, nudging them over the edge.
Once they start sliding, the momentum, rhythm, and layout of your next lines determine whether they will continue their momentum or face friction and come to a screeching halt.
If they do face friction, there’s no way to resume the sliding process. They will climb right back up and walk away!
Do we want that? No.
What we want is for them to reach the very end of the slide, or, in more sensible words, our Call to Action.
Rules for the First Three Sentences
These three rules are considered highly helpful when it comes to keeping the reader hooked on the next sentence:
- Keep the first sentence ridiculously short: If your first sentence becomes a paragraph in itself, it will eat up a lot of the reader’s mental energy. That’s highly counterproductive, as they will waste no time closing the tab altogether.
- Open an immediate curiosity loop: You know what humans crave? Closure. And desperately so! If you begin with an intriguing claim, an unresolved tension, or an incomplete scenario in the first or second statement, they will get hooked. There is a high chance that they will read the third sentence, just to get their closure.
- Cut the Jargon: Don’t open by stating the obvious, going into a background summary, or going into some abstract loophole regarding why the topic matters. No one wants to read that, at least not at that point. The best thing to do is to drop the reader directly into the middle of a scenario or a conflict, and let nature take its course.
Bucket Brigades and the Art of Greasing the Slide
You need to remember one thing. The world has a very short attention span, thanks to social media.
Hence, no matter how good an opening you write, people are going to get bored after the first few lines, purely because of their own pea-sized ability to focus.
To minimise the damage, we use something called Bucket Brigades.
These are nothing but short phrases that act as a bridge between lines. They are normally two to four words long and help re-establish the momentum when it begins to falter.
Chances are, you’ve already used them at one point or another. You just didn’t know what they were called.
I’ll jog your memory.
Here are some common bucket brigades:
- Here’s the catch:
- Let that sink in.
- The good news?
- Now, it gets worse:
- Think about it this way:
When to Use Bucket Brigades
These small phrases are generally used at points where the momentum is supposed to go down.
Feel free to drop one according to the context whenever the transition starts to feel dense, sluggish or unnatural.
Let’s understand with the help of an example:
Without a Bucket Brigade:
You spent two hours reading for your test, but failed to recall a single formula the next morning because passive reading doesn’t build memory retention.
Ugh, bland, right? And so boring. No wonder the reader already went back.
Now see the magic happen with a Bucket Brigade:
You spent two hours reading for your test.
Then, the worst happened:
The next morning, you blanked on the very first question
See the difference? It’s night and day. The reader isn’t going to click away from this.
What did it take to change the scenario? Just a phrase comprising of a few words sandwiched between a boring sentence and a boring sentence (my failed attempt at a rock and a hard place idiom).
What We Learnt
Let’s take a brief look at the learnings from today’s article:
- Keep the first sentence short.
- Introduce curiosity loops in the beginning to keep the reader hooked.
- Drop them right in the middle of a scene, and let nature take its course.
- I can’t stress this enough: Use Bucket Bridges!
In the next article, we will take a deep dive into The Art of Irresistible Offer and a little birdie known as Risk Reversal.
Until then, ciao!
Articles in this series:
- The Beginner’s Guide to Copywriting: Definitions, Differences, and Daily Applications
- The Rule of One: The Golden Principle Behind High-Converting Copy (Part 2)
- Features Tell, Benefits Sell: The 3-Tier Value Ladder in Copywriting (Part 3)
- Cheat Code to Structure Winning Copy: Mastering PAS and AIDA (Part 4)
- The 80/20 Rule of Copywriting: Why Your Headline Makes or Breaks the Sale (Part 5)
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