Australian copywriting maestro Pete Godfrey is blogging up a storm this week. He has just posted an item titled “The Power Of A Provocative Question”.

Pete provides a great example of how to draw readers into your copy with this question…

“How Much Younger Do You Want To Look?”

And, of course, it can easily be adapted to appeal to the core desire of your particular market.

Now it works because it’s effectively a question that pretty much everyone is going to say “Yes” to and as a result will want to discover more.

The other main type of question that works well is the classic…

“Do You Make These Mistakes In English?”

In this case, the reasons the headline works are slightly different. Firstly, it’s playing on the fear of missing out (because of a “mistake”). Fear of loss, as discussed in a previous post, is often a very powerful motivator.

Secondly, in this case there’s the curiosity element. What are these mistakes that could be so costly? Actually, in this case, the potential pain is implied, so the writer had to be pretty certain that the question would hit the right “pain” buttons in the audience. (It did of course, as the ad was extraordinarily successful).

Now, there is a danger to using questions in headlines (indeed, in copy anywhere). If you ask a question that does not engage the reader, one that elicits indifference, you’re going to lose them. As an example, a question like this…

“Are You As Excited By Our New Widget As We Are?”

…is probably going to result in a “Who cares?” response.  Not a great example, I know, but I think you get the idea.

So, Pete’s post is well worth a read and also contains a couple of variations on the idea that you can use in your headlines (or subheads, as well).