The Importance of Attention Grabbing Headlines.
It doesn't matter if you have a professional looking website,
with a superb product or service. Nor does it matter if your
sales copy is the best there is. Without the right wording in
your headline, you will not make many sales. Do you know how to
create the perfect headline?
A very good friend of mine, Mavis, made the fatal mistake of
ignoring the importance of killer headlines. This mistake nearly
lost her her business. She had a great niche product,
hand-crafted jewellery. She was able to sell loads of beautiful
items through her stall at a local market, but she wanted to
start selling her wares to a wider market and saw the internet
as the perfect medium.
With only basic computer skills, she managed to put a pretty
impressive website together. Her sales copy was good, she put in
the essential call to action, everything was just perfect, or so
she thought.
So what did Mavis do wrong?
Simply, it was the headline. It just didn't work. It didn't have
the power to grab the attention of the potential customer. The
headline does 90% of the work when it comes to sales copy.
Unless you can catch the interest of a customer, you have no
customers. Not a plan if you are trying to make a living through
the internet.
Did Mavis know how important the headlines where?
She did plenty of research before she set up her website. She
read everything that she could get her hands on. Covering all
the topics from web hosting to marketing, sales copy to
advertising. But nothing on the importance of headline wording.
Everything she read she put into practice. Considering she knew
very little before she started, she did an amazing job. Thinking
that she had covered it all and with everything in place, she
launched her site and generated lots of targeted traffic to it.
She only made 2 sales in 4 months. Not looking good for Mavis is
it.
She rang me up one day and asked me what was she doing wrong.
She told me that she was at her wits end and didn't know what to
do. She said that the website was getting lots of visitors, but
they weren't staying there long enough to become customers. I
went straight to view her website and as soon as the page loaded
I could clearly see what the problem was. You guessed it, the
headline. The powerful and hypnotic wording was just not there
in her headline. That one, singular oversight was costing her
dearly. The website was beautifully designed and easy to
navigate. The sales copy was very professional, she used all the
right calls to action and offered an excellent refund policy.
But the fact is, no-one ever saw any of this because they never
got past the headline.
I told her to come around to see me and I would show her how she
could turn things around. Mavis and I sat at the computer and I
showed her the good, the bad and the ugly of headlines on
websites. Within a few minutes, she could see where she was
going wrong. She just hadn't been using the right words to get
the effect that is needed. You have to GRAB the attention of
browsing customers, by using powerful, emotional and hypnotic
words. So I made us another cup of coffee before we sat down and
I showed Mavis how simple it is to make sizzling headlines.
You need to start by creating a 'benefit statement'. This is
what will make your reader want to know about what you are
selling. Then you sandwich the benefit statement with action
words and phrases. These are the true ingredients of
attention-grabbing headline writing.
Okay, so what is a benefit statement?
This is simply the end 'result' of what your customer will
experience when purchasing or using your product.
In mavis's case we came up with the benefit statement of "own
unique hand-crafted jewellery.' Then we decided to sandwich this
with 'the perfect way to' and 'delivered straight to your door.'
The result:- "The Perfect Way To Own Unique Hand-Crafted
Jewellery, Delivered Straight To Your Door." We played around
with a few more, but decided to give this one a go.
What happened to Mavis's business?
Mavis went home and immediately set about changing her home
page. She removed the old headline and replaced it with the new
one. Within 24 hours of Mavis uploading her updated website, 5
orders where placed. By the end of the month she had made sales
of $1564. She hadn't made any other changes to her website, just
the headline and it completely turned her business around. She
did have the advantage of already having targeted traffic
visiting her site. Before the change of headlines, that traffic
just clicked away from her page, but with the new headline, they
became drawn in, taking time to have a look at the exquisite
goods that Mavis had to offer. Some people staying long enough
to make a purchase. Goal accomplished.
In conclusion, the headline is THE most important thing to take
into consideration when writing your sales copy. Getting it
wrong can have devastating results. Getting it right can have
positively profound affects.
Never, ever underestimate the power of headlines. Unless you
want your business to suffer dismally low sales and never really
make it off the ground.
If you are having problems writing your winning headlines, you
could always pay someone else to write them for you. Or you can
get a software program that will do it for you. The first option
could be a bit expensive, but there are some fairly cheap
software programs that you will be able to use every time you
need new headlines, so I would recommend this.
Jane Harper.