A good product or service is not a guarantee that people will line up to buy. A sales copy (Ad) makes that happen. The headline is the most important part of an Ad. It is an ad for the ad. Headlines have to accomplish three critical goals:
1. Stop the audience/readers in their path
2. Make a promise of solving a problem
3. Make the audience curious to make them read/view/listen to the complete Ad
5 essential ingredients of a headline:
1. Grabs Attention - makes a claim or promise, stirs curiosity.
2. Screens and Qualifies Readers - attracts the right leads and repeals negative ones
3. Draws readers into the body of the copy - Makes them want to read/listen/view
4. Communicates one big idea
5. Establishes credibility - plays the authority card
5 Headline Templates:
1. "How to headline" eg How to generate 10 referrals
2. "Transactional headline" eg 5 tactics to close sales in 1 day
3. "Reason Why Headline" eg Why your 8 min presentation fails to work?
4. "Probing Question Headline" eg Is your 30s presentation really working?
5. "If then Headline" eg. If you can follow a recipe, you can close sales too
Write lots of possible headlines for your products and services. My formula is to write 20 headlines for each type. Many of them are bad. However, when it comes to writing compelling headlines, we can find good ones only after a lot of bad ones are written.
Subodh
Comments