Copy Writing - Three Deadly Killers For Your Headlines

When crafting a piece of compelling copy writing, your headline accounts for 80% of the impact.  

Why is this?

Because the sole purpose of your headline is to get the rest of your sales letter read. It is really the ad for the ad and if it fails to get the reader to continue to read the letter, it has failed.

Therefore, it has to perform three distinct functions effectively and simultaneously, or your sales letter never gets read.

Instantly attract the reader's attention: imagine you wish to attract a particular person in a crowded area. What would you do? Of course . . . call out their name. Obviously, you can't call out the name of every person who visits your website, on arrival, so the next best thing is to start off with some equally attention getting statement, which says, in effect: "Hey. . .this is for you!"

I've found this can be most effectively achieved by a little sub heading, in bold type, about 10 point, positioned to the left, immediately above the main headline, saying something like: "Bad back? You need to read this . . . " or "If you haven't got $1million in the bank yet, read on . . ."

Instantly establish validity: in the 21st Century, we are assailed from breakfast till bedtime with as many as 5,000 advertisements, sound bites and general entreaties to "buy" buy! buy!". Fortunately, we have a built in filtering mechanism to allow us to deal with this barrage.

I call this mechanism WIIFM. This stands for "What's In It For Me" and – unless you immediately address this unspoken question in the reader's mind, your headline won't even register a flicker – and they will be gone, probably for ever!

So, having attracted their attention, you now have little more than three seconds in which to live or die!

It's been said that there should be no more than 17 words in your headline, although I've seen some which are longer than that and pull like crazy. The essential thing is to take just as many words as you need (but not a single one more) to grab the reader's attention and lead them into the body of the letter.  

So, you have to home straight in on the main benefit of your product. Within the bounds of truth, make this as outrageous as you can. Here's one from my copywriting teacher, John Carlton... 

This High School Dropout Regularly Humiliates Wall Street Gurus With A Unique System Guaranteed To Make You A Million In One Year - Or You Money Back!

Prove it!: not only must you trigger your reader's WIIFM radar, you must also assuage their cynicism. You see, just like most of us, they've also bought the "too good to be true" product, that didn't do what it promised.

Therefore an integral part of your headline must be definite proof of the outrageous statement you have just made. This can be in the form of a bank statement, customer testimonial or other proof, but is absolutely vital.

The combination of an intriguing – almost outrageous - headline, plus immediate proof, will make the reader more inclined to start reading the rest of your letter.

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