What I will show you here is not my invention. Russell Brunson, the founder of ClickFunnels, wrote about it in Dotcom Secrets.

Hook - Story - Offer

"Now it’s our job to create bait that will bring those dream customers into your world. The way we do that is through a framework that we call Hook, Story, Offer. Every step of your funnel will have a hook, a story, and an offer. The ads you place online, the emails you send, the landing pages you create, as well as any upsells, webinars, or phone calls you make, will all have a hook, a story, and an offer. If something isn’t working working in your funnel, it’s always either the hook, the story, or the offer."

The headline is the Hook.

After the headline comes the story. The first part of the story is your Introduction.

Sean Vosler has been using the Contrarian Copy structure as a starting point to all of his pieces.

It’s perfect for creating landing pages, webinars, video scripts, etc. and you can easily start using it today if you read this outline.

The purpose of Contrarian Copy is not to be clickbait, but to build a lasting bond of trust by giving your readers an epiphany.

Epiphany is a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the essential reality of something, usually initiated by some simple, commonplace experience.

It allows a problem or situation to be understood from a new and deeper perspective.

When we give someone an epiphany, there is a powerful bond of trust created in the process.

The “missing piece” is where Contrarian Copy really shines.

What does this have to do with “selling” something?

Cognitive Dissonance

When we introduce a new idea to someone, we provoke something called “Cognitive dissonance” or “belief disharmony”.

The feeling is similar to a sudden electric shock, because it clashes with your existing beliefs.

The disharmony NEEDS to be resolved.

To put simply, it is mentally uncomfortable to hold on to conflicting ideas for too long, therefore the mind will try to find a way to resolve the contradiction, just to reduce the discomfort.

Why is this important for us?

Because marketing is changing another person’s behavior.

Marketers introduce new ideas into the minds of prospects, thereby provoke discomfort.

As a marketer you also have the job to resolve this discomfort and create a bond of trust through the resulting epiphany.

Let’s look at an example of using contrarian copy to cause a realization.

I am signed up for several marketing email lists and I just got the following in an email:

Statement:I'll be pulling down this video replay to Joel P's brilliant "How to Build a $500 a Day Side Business" training at midnight tonight Pacific Time.

Counter-statement:If this guy makes $500 a day with his e-commerce business, why would he bother creating this training program and charge you $2,000 for it?

There’s your cognitive dissonance, because you just introduced a counter-idea that shook the reader’s original idea. He can’t decide which one to believe and this causing him pain.

As we unfold the explanation, the reader will have an epiphany (realization). Since you are the one that caused the realization, the reader will now trust you and you built topical authority.

Why is there such a trend for $2000 courses…?And how is it that this $180 course delivers even more value than courses 10x as expensive?The answer?Greed and inefficient marketing.Greed is a hell of a drug!Every fake guru you see flashing an Italian supercar has a lifestyle cost that requires them to overcharge for everything.The creator of the best email course I found lives a quiet life… He hikes with his dog and his wife every day and he has built the house of his dreams.When you really get down to it, a “dream lifestyle” doesn’t have to cost that much! …until folks get greedy!Inefficient marketing is number two…When a course creator has a 50% refund rate because the product actually sucks and it’s grossly overpriced…Plus they have to use aggressive persuasion (webinar hype B.S.) and $1400+ in Facebook ads to make one sale…Their margins actually suck!And YOU end up paying for THEIR inefficiencies.

I hope you get the idea of how to you use the above to sell something. This has a bit more theory and practice to it… See 7-Figure Copywriting.

Pushing people to buy results in sales resistance. It is far better to sell through teaching, and this is what nurture email sequences do.

Practical task:

Write an email about your product using the Contrarian Copy method.

Take a statement that is widely believed to be true, such as “Content is king”.

Now introduce your counter-idea. “There is an oversupply of content”.

I Google “how many blogs are created daily” and this is the answer that comes up:

“To date, there are more than 500 million blogs out of 1.7 billion websites in the world. Their authors account for over 2 million blog posts daily.”

From this I start to develop the story of how there are too many awesome content pieces for the same query and therefore “Write awesome content and pray” approach is not enough any more. You also need to promote your content, get social shares, build links. Now you can introduce your system that handles this problem.

Know – Like – Trust – Challenge – Convert

This is the cycle from teaching to selling.

Getting people to know, like and trust you is the foundation of the sale.

Know you: People won’t buy anything from you unless you put yourself out there and connect with your audience. Your story helps to make this connection.

Like you: It’s clear that people don’t buy just based on facts and figures. There is also a lot of emotion involved in a purchase.

Trust you: We touched upon the fact that trust comes from causing realizations to your readers. But trust gets destroyed if you don’t help them get results.

In the final analysis, results are everything, results are the best promotion.

Your customers will stick around and pay you forever if they get the expected results. If they don’t, they will look for something different.

Challenge & Convert them: Many think the best sales people are those who focus on developing a close, personal relationship to their customer. While this is true to a degree, the best of the best are those who challenge the prospect’s perspective on the problem or the solution, then offer an alternative (REAL) problem and a solution to that problem.

Example:

You came here to learn about building funnels. I showed you the main parts of a funnel – lead magnet, landing page, tripwire, etc.

But then I challenged your perspective on our initial problem, because those parts are just the “bone” of your funnel. The reality is that conversion will depend to a large degree on the words (the copy) that you use for dressing the funnel up.

Most people don’t even realize this, therefore I am here selling you copywriting.

That’s the main reason why ClickFunnels has Funnel Scripts as an upsell.

People are normally wrong in what they think they need.

Challenge them and sell them the products that solve their problems.