If you’re creating ASMR content or online posts to boost engagement and audience response, knowing the right ASMR trigger words is essential. These words aren’t just random phrases—they are carefully chosen terms that evoke emotions, spark curiosity, and create a sensory reaction in your listeners or readers. When used effectively, they can help you increase watch time, gain subscribers, and improve audience connection.
What Are ASMR Trigger Words?
An ASMR trigger word is a specific word or phrase designed to initiate a physical or emotional response, often causing tingles, relaxation, or heightened attention. These words are especially powerful in the ASMR community because they:
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Evoke sensory experiences: Certain soft, repetitive, or rhythmic words can stimulate relaxation or tingling sensations.
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Capture attention: They make your content more engaging, increasing the likelihood of clicks, likes, and shares.
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Guide action: Whether it’s encouraging viewers to subscribe or making them feel more connected to your content, these words can subtly influence behavior.
Not all words have the same effect. Some are calming and hypnotic, while others are energizing or curiosity-driven. Using the right ones can dramatically improve your ASMR content performance.
“How to”
“smart”
”Dumb”
All these are potential prompts to click the post’s title and probably read the content. Jon would have titled the post ‘How to Blog Better.’ But would it be as interesting as the current title?
Well, you don’t want to blog better. You definitely desire to be smart, and outsmart all your fellow dumb bloggers!
The primary reason they’re known as ‘trigger words’ is the common phrase ‘pull the trigger.’ This phrase is used as a euphemism for taking a certain action or making a particular decision. Your website users may not be sure if they need your online course. But after reading the entire sales copy, they ‘pull the trigger’ and purchase the product.
A trigger word prompts a consumer to take your desired action. It encourages them to buy, signup, and more.
Do they work?
Trigger words aren’t exactly cash in hand, but a little bit close. They work by persuading your target audience. Often, they call attention to themselves just because consumers tend to get attracted to specific phrases and words.
For instance, ‘free’ is among the most popular trigger words, and for a good reason. Everyone gets attracted to free stuff. A larger number of internet users are automatically looking for it while perusing listings in the search engine results pages and reading articles.
They’re also waiting for you to tell them to do something. When given a specific direction, consumers can take a specific action.
And that’s what trigger words do.
They inspire some type of emotion and cause consumers to ‘feel.’ For the exact reason that an excellently-crafted film can move audience to tears, well-thought-out choice and use of trigger words in a marketing copy can move consumers to buy or take any other desired action.
A list of trigger words that can boost engagement in your strategy
Now that you know what a trigger word is and why it works, what specific trigger words should you use in your copy? Here is a list of 101 trigger words.
1. Excitement
- Blissful
- Flush
- Amazing
- Imagine
- Delightful
- Wonder
- Energize
- Jubilant
- Ultimate
- New
- Discover
- Novelty
2. Safety
- Bright
- Fix
- Hope
- Boost
- Cure
- Stop
- Health
- Need
- Undo
- Hope
- Worse
- Need
- Trusted
- Minor
- Save
- Personal
- Coward
- Avenge
- How
- Before you forget
- Destiny
- Reclaim
- Empower
- Tired
- Overcome
- Yes
- You
- Exclusivity
- Insider
- Unlock
- Elite
- Secret
- Limited
- Revolutionary
- Greed
- Greed
- Convert
- Instant
- Free
- Win
- More
- Cheaper
- Want
- Faster
- Authority
- Crush
- Banned
- Destroy
- Because
- Proof
- Controversial
- If
- Never
- Guarantee
- Forever
- Unconditional
- Seize
- Proven
- Desire
- Thirst
- Craving
- Enhance
- Longing
- Delicious
- Mystery
- Impatience
- Easy
- Deadline
- Today
- Now
- Anger
- Antagonistic
- Gall
- Agony
- Disinformation
- Hate
- Arrogant
- Outrage
- Umbrage
- Never again
- Turn the tables
- Fear
- Sacrifice
- Helpless
- Surrender
- Floundering
- Paralyzed
- Savagery
- Cruel
- Exposed
- Burned
- Payback
- Conspiracy
- Had enough?
- Taboo
- Violence
- Swindle
- Vindication
- Unscrupulous
- Contempt
- Pointless
- Fleece
- Temporary fix
Use trigger words to amplify marketing strategies
Now that you know what trigger words are, it’s time to use them. Here are different ways you can use trigger words in various areas of marketing.
1. Headlines
Headlines matter, and you can tell by the success of various online platforms such as BuzzFeed. According to Buzzsumo, here is one of the widely shared posts.
An outstanding headline can make content go viral, get thousands of shares and clicks. An improperly crafted headline can have the opposite performance – no readers, no clicks, no shares, and no nothing!
Your choice of words brings a difference between a pile of garbage and a headline that can go viral. In the BuzzFeed article above, look at how trigger words like ‘Mystry’ and ‘Amazing’ have been creatively used to spark curiosity among readers.
Here’s what most people work with…
- Tips for making more sales
- How to clean your garden
- Guide to going vegan
There’s nothing wrong with these headlines. Actually, they adhere to the right headline formula – short, precise, and informative. However, you can spice them up using trigger words.
- The Ultimate Guide to Going Vegan and Reclaiming your Health
- X Insider Tips to Drive more Online Sales, Success Guaranteed
- How to Successfully Grow a Garden in your Backyard – Proven Formula
2. Subheadings
These are the section headings within a post, usually denoted as H2, H3, H4, and more.
Excellent subheadings can improve engagements and encourage your readers to finish the entire post. They keep the readers moving down the webpage. Here is an example;
In this subheading, ‘minor,’ ‘boost,’ and ‘your’ are all trigger words.
3. Product names
Your products can benefit from creative use of trigger words. An outstanding example would be the corporation Death Wish Coffee. Notice the use of an extremely potent term – death – in their products name. To get a higher level of conversion, they used another trigger term in their one-sentence product description – The world’s strongest coffee.
4. Pop-ups
Whether you love or hate them, pop-ups are among the top ways of converting more site visitors into email subscribers. Indeed, you can convert more site users with just a few sweet words. For instance, check this pop-up…
The Sustainable Harvest uses the terms ‘delicious’ and ‘sacrificing’ to encourage their website users to subscribe.
5. Landing pages
How about using trigger words on an entire landing page? It’s recommended. They can work wonders when it comes to boosting conversions on your page, whether a full-fledged sales copy or a product page. Check the recent Shopify’s free trial page.
‘Trusted’ and ‘free’ are trigger words.
Look at Transferwise’s page. They use terms such as ‘cheaper’ and ‘faster.’
6. Buttons
These are the ultimate CTA (call to action). And you can use trigger words to make your CTA catchier and increase chance of better conversions. Here are samples…
It’s recommended to use trigger words in all your buttons and call to action. While you are at, consider using a higher number of buttons in your content and emails to get more viewers click your content. It’s also recommended to add more images especially on Facebook Ads.
7. Domain name or business name
Perhaps you already have a domain or business name. In case you don’t, consider using a trigger word when you decide to take the plunge. Besides, you can change your business name, though it might be worth the hassle. Here are some examples of companies that use trigger words in their business or domain name.
Trigger word – elite
Trigger word – Best
It’s not easy to go out of your way to rebrand your business just to add a trigger word in its name or domain name. However, if you haven’t started a company yet, it cannot hurt to include a trigger word in its name and probably the tagline.
8. Call to action
Lastly, you can use a trigger in CTA. It could pop-up or a button. It can also be a phrase within the content. For instance Sumo uses a call to action on their main blog page.
Wrap up
Creative use of trigger words works. They can spice up your content headlines, boost your email open rates, and boost your sales pages views, clicks, and conversions.
Trigger words inspire target audience to take a direct action. When used properly, they can bring favorable outcomes, benefits, belief, and other forms of value.
