Let’s say you were shipwrecked on a remote, abandoned island.
What would you do to let someone know where you are and save your own life?
The first thing you’d do is try to create some kind of message that could be seen by a passing airplane or search party. What do you think you’d write?
Would you write out a little joke, some clever play on words, or just draw a picture of a sexy woman? No way! Not if you wanted to save your life, you wouldn’t.
You’d want your message to seize the undivided attention of whoever saw it. You’d also want it to be direct and right to the point. Something along the lines of:
That ought to do the job of getting your message across in no uncertain terms – and of drawing the complete attention of whoever spotted it, wouldn’t you agree?
Why then would you ever want to start off your sales piece with a joke, a cute phrase, a clever play on words, or a picture of some bimbo in a bikini?
The answer is, you wouldn’t!
Yet this is a major mistake that’s still being made by 95% of the businesses you see advertising. Need proof? Just pick up today’s newspaper and thumb through the ads. Or search on any key word in any search engine, and randomly visit 10 or 15 web sites. You’ll be shocked at how many of them waste their precious resources.
With all the competition for your customer’s time and attention, you don’t have the luxury of tricking them, being too clever for your own good, or boring them for even a second. Here then is…
Your headline should be as powerful and direct as a concussion grenade.
We can hear the collective groan of art directors all over the world right now. We have a simple message for them: Tough luck!
You should take your marketing and advertising as seriously as you would saving your life. If you don’t, you may not be in business too long.
What this means is that the only type of headline that is worth writing is a headline that jumps off the page, seizes your reader by the throat, and forces them to pay attention.
How can lofty goal be accomplished? By showing your customer a powerful display of what they gain from reading your marketing piece.
We forget who it was that said it, but some wise marketing guru once stated something along the lines of, “The heart of any headline is promise, major promise.”
That, my friend, is the absolute truth, because your headline has to do two things. The first we’ve already covered: It must absolutely command your reader’s attention. If it doesn’t, you’re dead in the water. You’ve lost your reader and any chance of getting them to take the action you want.
The second thing your headline absolutely must accomplish is promising your reader something so wonderful – yet believable – that they can’t resist being drawn into the rest of your sales piece.
Look, people today are extremely busy. You’re only going to get 5 or 10 seconds at most to show them an extremely compelling reason why they should continue reading your piece. If you think a customer is going to read 3, 4, 5 paragraphs or an entire page to find out what’s in it for them, you’re sadly mistaken.
If you don’t go with your biggest guns right from the start, the odds are extremely high that your piece will be shot straight to the trash can. You’ll lose your reader and any possibility of making the sale.
What kind of promise makes a powerful, attention getting headline? Here’s a list:
- The major benefit your customer gets from your product
- A powerful offer
- A FREE offer
- A special, limited time offer
- A powerful testimonial
- A warning to the reader (one that cautions not to buy without reading this first; or a warning if you have a powerful, verified statistic that will shock your reader or command attention)
- A message targeting a specific group of people – if it’s the only group whose attention you want
Of all the promises listed above, there’s one that stands head and shoulders above the rest. In fact, 99 out of 100 ads and sales letters that I write use it as the focus of the headline. I might include other promises in the headline as well, but I always focus the headline on this type of promise.
Can you guess what it is?
We won’t keep you in the dark any longer. The single most effective promise to use in your headline is: The major benefit your customer gets from your product.
Remember, when reading advertising, your customer only cares about how your product can make their life easier or better… or how you can solve a crucial, nagging problem they have… or how you can help them achieve a goal they desperately desire.
So why fool around with anything else? Use your headline to drive your advertising stake directly through the heart of your customer’s most critical needs.
It’s simple and it works like wildfire. I’ve used it time and time again to help my clients sell millions of dollars worth of their products and services.
Countless times, I’ve seen nothing more than the change of a headline improve sales by as much as 400%. Now, admittedly, 400% is an extreme case. But gains of 20% to 50% in sales are not uncommon, just by changing a lukewarm headline to a powerful, major benefit headline. With gains like that, I can’t see any reason why you’d even consider not using this type of headline.
Here are some examples of headlines that earned their advertisers impressive sales. This example is from a brochure for a bank selling mortgage loans to people interested in buying a house.
NO FEES.
NO POINTS.
NO CLOSING COSTS.
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Not very subtle is it? Just direct, to the point, and loaded with promises of the three benefits most valuable to home buyers.
You’d think that home buyers would be most interested in the best interest rate, since interest will be paid for the full 30-year term of the loan. But consumers are an interesting bunch. They’ll pay a lot more in long-term pain to avoid a little short-term pain right now.
The following headline is from a sales letter for the Lifecycle.
Now you can cut your exercise time in half –
risk-free for 30 days!
Plus receive a $199 home gym absolutely FREE –
No obligation!
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Let’s take a look at what kind of promises the advertiser is using is this headline and subhead. First, they concentrate on the major benefit “cut your exercise time in half.”
Then they kick in another benefit, a “risk-free 30-day trial.”
The subhead makes another powerful promise: A bonus of a “$199 home gym absolutely FREE.” They worked FREE into their promise too” – a powerful motivator.
Now, let’s take a look at one more example.
How To Sell Much More Of Your Software
And Eliminate Your Two Worst Headaches!
….Now an ace copywriter (who is also a
former software engineer) can kick your sales
into high gear – and make your life a whole
lot easier at the same time
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This final example demonstrates how focusing on the key benefit and offering the solution to a critical problem makes a powerful combination. Also, notice how the subhead speaks directly to making
the reader’s life easier.
One other promise element is at work here. The sales piece has targeted a very specific, limited group. The offer is designed to appeal only to businesses that produce and publish computer software.