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Check Your Headlines
By Michael | July 15, 2008
What’s the most important part of any sales letter? It’s the headline!
You see, over 70% of all prospects will decide if they are going to read the rest of your sales letter – just from the headline. If the headline doesn’t give them a strong enough reason why or catch their attention, then “poof” – they close their browser and leave your site forever.
So how do you craft a strong headline? Well, you can’t just throw together anything and call it a headline.
In fact, professional copywriters normally spend a lot of time writing up potential headlines for a sales letter. Some copywriters start with brainstorming headlines before they write the rest of the sales letter. They try to find the “perfect” headline that will naturally flow into the rest of the sales letter.
Other copywriters will write the sales letter first and then spend a separate brainstorming session writing potential headlines. The biggest advantage of this way is you can focus on brainstorming headlines when you feel mentally fresh and focused.
Just choose which method you feel most comfortable with and write out as many headlines as you can think of. Don’t worry about editing the headlines. Just write as many of them as you can think of – as fast as you can!
Personally, I normally like to come up with headlines for sales letters last. I’ll do an individual session of working on headlines for a sales letter. Often I will brainstorm at least 30 different headlines…frequently it’s closer to 100 different headlines.
I’ll choose what I feel is the best headline for the sales letter first. Then I look through the rest of the remaining possible headlines and choose anything that might be worth using as either another headline later in the sales letter or as a bullet point in the sales letter.
There have been entire books and courses written on crafting top-notch headlines but instead of telling you to go buy a book or course, I want to give you three easy to use tips that should help you write better headlines.
First, keep your headline focused on talking about one benefit of your product…two benefits max.
Second, add the words “How To” to the beginning of your headline. “How to” headlines are one of the most powerful ones you can use.
Third, capitalize each word in your headline. Studies have shown that by capitalizing each word in your major headline, it increases your response rate.
Let me give you an example. Suppose you have written an ebook on improving your golf swing. Many golfers are looking to shoot a better round of golf consistently which normally means they want to use less strokes to finish all 18 holes.
If your ebook will show them how to shave 10 strokes off their average score then your ebook should be of great interest to them. By using these three tips, you come up with a headline like this:
“How To Knock 10 Strokes Off Your Next Round of Golf!”
That’s all for now.
Need copywriting help? Go to www.superbcopywriting.com and send me a confidential e-mail.
To Your Success,
Mike
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