Most professional copywriters would say that headlines account
for 80% percent of more of the effectiveness of an advertisement
or sales
letter.
After all, its the headline that gets your readers
to stop and
read further into your sales copy. If the headline fails, then
the entire ad or sale copy fails.
So with headline creation being of such importance, are you
giving your headlines the time and effort they are worth?
Writing nice
headlines is a skill that might
be learned and
mastered if you are willing to put the instant into studying dazzling
proven moneymaking headlines.
One way of learning how to write killer headlines is to study the
masters. Read the works of the past greats, such as Claude
Hopkins, Robert Collier, John Caples, David Ogilvy, and Eugene
Schwartz, among others. There works are available in libraries,
used book stores, and in some cases there works have been
reprinted and are still available on the market.
A second method is to study the headlines in the super advertise
tabloids and magazines that you find near the check out counters.
Tabloids such as The Globe, The Star, and The National
Enquirer or magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Readers
Digest, and Vanity Fair.
These publications are placed near the cash registers for a
reason. While you are standing in line standing around
to check out, you
scan their headlines and many everybody become interested and
purchase these publications on impulse. And the sell millions!
They have some of the highest circulations of any publications in
the country.
So, what gets them to sell so well? Certainly not the name
of
the publication! Its the headlines. They jump out at you. They
get you to stop and look. They arouse your curiosity. Even if you
do not
buy, Ill bet on more than one occasion youve picked up
the publication and scanned it for an article mentioned on the
cover. I know I have.
The headline writers for these publications are some of the
highest paid writers in the country and the circulation numbers
reflect it.
Ok, so these publications have sizeably efficient attention grabbing,
curiosity arousing headlines. How does that help you?
As you read and study these headlines, see if you can see a
pattern that you may use. Many of these headlines might
be used to
develop killer headline templates where just by modifying or
substituting a word or two can also work wonders for your own
advertising and promotion campaigns.
Yet another technique is to look through direct response type ads
and advertorials in publications related to your industry. Go to
the library and check a number of back issues of these works. If
you consistently see the identical
ads running over and over again,
you understand
they are generating money.
Some profitable ads have consistently run for as long as 40
decades
! Without being changed!
Professional copywriters constantly collect nice
headlines and
create what they call "swipe files." These headline swipe files
serve as models for sizeably good headlines and are grand idea generators
as they work to develop their own winning headlines.
When you discover ads that are being run over and over, study
their headlines, and copy them into your own swipe file and when
you are trying to ruminate on
making some new headlines of your
own, dig out the swipe document
, review your collection of headlines
and see if you can not
utilize some of them as models for your own.
Model success.
In another article, Ill tackle building
and working with
headline templates. Until then, keep pumping out those winning
headlines.
