Bright Ideas # 61 - Turbo charge your marketing with powerful headlines  

What is the first thing most people see when they see an ad or open up a sales letter? Or look at a brochure, email or Web page?

The headline, right?

Yet most entrepreneurs I meet rarely use headlines. And when they do, they often write them almost as an afterthought.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been shown someone’s sales letter, Website or brochure and there isn’t a headline in sight. Or it says something generic like Welcome to “Business Name”.

Yet any marketing professional or copywriter worth their salt will tell you that the headline is the single most important part of any marketing or advertising piece. In fact, most good copywriters will tell you they spend far more time on the headline than they do writing everything else.

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Why is the headline so important?
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Not only is it the first thing people see, the headline alone is often what makes people decide whether or not to keep reading. In fact, the two main jobs of the headline are:

1) To get the attention of your target market

2) Convince them to keep reading

In today’s fast-paced, information-overload world, people don’t have time to read a bunch of text unless the feel fairly confident it has information they need. So if the headline holds no interest, you can bet they won’t read on.

And if you need one more reason why your headline is so critical, consider this from world-famous copywriter and ad man, David Ogilvy “On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.”

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How do you go about writing an effective headline?
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Start by asking three questions:

Who is my ideal customer?
What are the key features and benefits of my product or service?
What is the number one reason my customer would want to buy this product or service?

The answers should form a solid basis for your headline.

Then, try following these eleven proven tips from David Ogilvy, Bob Bly and myself for creating powerful, attention-getting headlines.

1. When you put your headline in quotation marks you can increase recall by an average of 28 percent

2. Headlines that offer the reader helpful information like “How to…” attract above-average readership (I call these Reader’s Digest-style headlines)

3. If you are selling a product or service that is only bought by a small group of people, put words in your headline that will flag them down like “asthma”, “bed-wetters” or “women over 35”.

4. Make sure your headline suggests there is something that they want, or want to know, contained in the rest of the message

5. Whenever possible, avoid headlines that paint a negative picture. Go for the positive instead. People want positive things and changes in their lives.

6. Feature a free offer. You want to make it easy for people to say yes to what you are offering.

7. When you have news (maybe you are launching a new product or service, or have found a new use for an old product) use words like: new, now, at last, introducing, or announcing, to get the readers attention

8. Have your headline ask an open-ended (not yes or no) question like the famous “Do you make these mistakes in English?” It arouses curiosity and makes people want to find out the answer.

9. Warn the reader to delay buying with a headline like “Don’t buy another vacuum cleaner until you’ve read this free report!”

10. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Get a book of proven sales letters or advertisements then choose a headline you like and rewrite it to fit your needs. John Caples famous—and famously successful headline—“They laughed when I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play…” could be rewritten for a cooking school like this: “They laughed when I invited them over for an authentic Vietnamese dinner. But when they tasted the food…”

11. Once you’ve got your headline, don’t throw out your list of possible options that didn’t make the cut. Keep them around and use the best ones as subheads.

12. Don’t ever be afraid to test two headlines against each other—even if you just ask a few friends, family members or clients which one gets their attention and makes them want to know more.

Happy headline writing!

©2002-2006 Success Stream. All Rights Reserved. www.success-stream.com

Do you have a marketing, advertising or writing question you’d like to have answered? Email me and you might see the answer in a future edition of Bright Ideas.

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