Imagine, it's four AM, and you can't sleep. About a week ago, you mailed out a promotion letter for your product. It took every last dime you have...
...cause mail ain't cheap.
Today is the day you will know if the copy on that promotion is good enough to get sales. People have had time to get the letter, want the product, and send you a check...
...they've also had time to throw it in the trash pile because the headline didn't grab their attention.
Today, it's easy (read cheap) to throw up a sales page on the internet and send it some traffic. It makes it easy to get a little sloppy when you didn't spend tens of thousands of dollars to send your sales letter.
Here's the thing though, if no one reads your sales page, you won't make any sales. You won't know if you have a good product. You will never make all the money you could have made.
That's why today, we're talking about the fundamentals of writing headlines.
According to Victor Schwab in his MUST READ book How to Write a Good Ad
It cannot get sales if it is not read. The attention value of an ad is approximately twice as important as the actual convincingness of the test itself.
Headline Writing Mindset
- You must remember your ad is an uninvited guest. They don't invite you to the party. You snuck over the fence to get in, and now you have 3 seconds to prove you should be there.
- Focus on making your headline so good that it's easier to read your sales page than to pass it up.
What must a good headline do?
A good headline grabs the attention of your target market/buyer. You want the headline to scream out to your ideal customer.
Your ideal customer must feel rewarded for reading the headline. Reading the headline must fill them with an emotion that sparks interest (and a little dopamine hit wouldn't hurt either).
What rewards does a good headline promise?
According to Schwab, there are two kinds of approaches that work best. Positive and negative.
Positive headlines promise - Save, gain, or accomplish by increased mental, physical, financial, social, emotional, or spiritual stimulation, satisfaction, or well-being, or security.
Negative headlines promise to avoid (reduce or eliminate) risk, worries, losses, mistakes, embarrassment, drudgery, or undesirable conditions through the use of your product, how it will decrease fear of illness poverty, or discomfort, accident, boredom, and the loss of business or social prestige or advancement.
Which is better? It depends on the product and market. If you don't know which schema (we will talk about schemas another time) has the most significant impact on your market, you will have to test.
Note: Research shows consumer benefit headlines are far more successful than claim & boast headlines.
Which brings us to...
Write and test more than one headline.
Don't get lazy. Write as many headlines as you can stand to write. Then pick the best five. We are lucky to live in an internet world where you can test headlines, and it doesn't cost thousands of dollars.
That concludes part 1 of the headline writing series.
Next time, we talk about the fastest way to create high converting headlines that sell every time.
If you would like help with your headlines or sales pages, I'm more than happy to take a look. You can contact me here.