Your Ad With a Bad Headline Will Destroy Response

You have heard it time and time again, haven’t you? You always hear how important the headline is to your ad. Guess what, IT IS!

I am amazed by how many people who send me their ads (who are aware of how important the headline is) have horrible headlines.

My view of how headlines should be done has been changing recently. As I first started copywriting I clung onto attention grabbers (as that is easy). I read that headlines only need to attract the attention of the reader. I thought "easy enough"….

"Wife Beats Husband to Death With Cat"

Then I would talk about how this new Twitter software would save their lives.

There is no doubt that headline would get read by 99% of anyone who sees it.. Who could resist? Since I captivated everyone’s attention it is only natural they would buy the Twitter software….

You say you don’t think it would get people to buy the software? If you saw that headline and then read the first sentence "Find out how to get 5000 Twitter followers begging for your tweets in 7 days", you think you would stop reading?

You bet your ass you would, so would everyone else

I have begun to despise statement headlines- "23 Year Old College Flunky Makes $100.000 in 3 Weeks"… that is the status quo these days. There are a bazillion of those types of interest headlines out there right now.

I feel that the next generation (web 2.0) of users will ignore these headlines. (I also believe that long online sales copy is on it’s way out the door, but that’s for another day

With online copy, people are coerced into reading your ad. They clicked on something that caught their eye.

When people are dragged onto your sales page kicking and screaming, you don’t have but a couple seconds. Your headline and sub-heads need to be powerful, most importantly meaningful.

Let’s use the Twitter product as that is seemingly a boring product-

Do You Worry About Having a Good Christmas This Year?–Find Out How You Can Have $2000 in Time Using a Free Tool

Writing good headlines or body copy is about isolating your target market. In a down economy with many people stuggling, these people will read a little further.

As I mentioned in my last post- people do not dream about cars, piles of money or mansions… their dreams are usually negative. Most are worried about something. You need to isolate that demographic and punch them in their metaphorical nuts.

Remember, what you are selling is not for everyone, but everyone has worries (even the wealthy). Most people are in survivor mode and think backwards. They don’t care about preventing Cancer until Cancer touches their lives… NOW THEY CARE!

Hit people with question headlines that hit an emotional hot button. It could be money, health, self image, their child’s future, anything that digs into those sleepless moments.

Do not think you can reprogram the human race with your positive drival? Nobody has done it and you wont either.

Hit them where it hurts and promise them a way out of it

go get some

Paul

Are You One of The People Driving Me Nuts?

I’ll tell you what, I see nothing screwed up more than people trying to cram imagery into an ad that does not help it.

I see the "make money" websites with the exotic sports cars, the mansions and the piles of cash staring at me. Do you know what these guys think they are doing? They think they are creating a fantasy life by showing us these images.

What pops into your head when you see a mountain of cash piled in a Porsche? Smells like bullshit, don’t it. Not only that, dreams of wealth are weak. The promise of escaping a current crisis is overwhelming.

Do you stay awake at night thinking about a Mercedes or do you worry about the next car payment on your Ford Taurus?

When people see our ads they do not see them without bias. They know we have intention of picking their pocket. Their defenses are strong and they are resistant.

Being they are already in a heightned state and their bs detector is at maximum, why give them a reason to run away? You know very well that seeing those images on a money making website/mailer make you giggle, yet everyone still does it.

Do you know why they still put them on there? Neither do they, it has become the status quo. I will not even write copy for such a project. I know I will have lost them far before they start reading. Why battle uphill?

Most think over the top images attract attention, it’s true but not always in a good way. Getting attention can be very subtle and far more effective.

Check This Out

Let’s say you have a row of 50 white coffee cups (these being ads in the marketplace). Which cup catches your eye? You will arbitrarily just focus on one or none.

Now let’s tip one cup on it’s side, which one will get your total attention? Same white cup, totally different result.

Napoleon was interesting in many ways, but he knew how to stand out and get the peoples attention. When Napoleon would speak at public gatherings he would put the tallest officers he could find on each side of him. The people’s attention was immediately drawn to him as he stood out like he was on fire.

Every image must serve a purpose. If you put a picture of a house on an ad for window cleaning you are missing the boat. That house does not mean anything to them. Are the people who own it happier or relieved because they had their windows cleaned?

See, the house is an empty image. Now a distraction. A picture of a family playing in the front yard however…. that can put them mentally into the picture.

Your ad is a sales person and it must seduce to get  sales. If you are just filling space with empty images, you will also have a lot more empty space in your bank account….

go get some

Paul

-Next we will look at headlines and how you are screwing them up

"Guess What I am Going To Do To You Next"

I know you must be thinking I am really reaching here, but hang in there.

I have studied martial arts for more than 20 years. The style I study is Bruce’s Jeet Kune Do. ("the art of fighting with out fighting")

Basically JKD is extracting the ‘best of’ from multiple styles of martial arts. (now known as MMA). As you are well aware that is what the best direct marketers do. They don’t waste time with useless brand awareness tactics or passive advertising… they have a small arsenal of proven methods.

Many of you may think that Bruce knew a lot of moves, and you would be right. He could do any high flying kick, all sorts of close range punches, he could whip you to the ground and he could even screw with your mind with his freaky noises.

He could do it all… on the big screen, but in reality he had a very small bag of tricks.

You have seen him do many fantastic things in the movies, but that was an illusion. That was hollywood magic (much like the useless tv commercials and print ads seen these days). What you saw was not real

Bruce used to get into fights quite often. Other Asians were always challenging him (including extras on Enter the Dragon!). They knew if they could beat him or even give him a good run, they would be famous.

Bruce would win most of these challenges within 20 seconds. He used no flying kicks, no speed punches and no wrestling moves. He used what I like to call an open door invitation.

He would stand back and allow the challenger to attack. Bruce turned defense into an unbeatable offense. They would come at him and he would simply stop them and have complete control.

He did this by using a few simple tools.

• Eye poke
  
• redirect
  
• and a stop hit
  

(Eye poke is obvious (and hard to defend when you are attacking). Redirect is when you come in to throw a punch or kick and Bruce would block it and enter with an assault. The last is a stop hit. Bruce was lightning fast and when someone would advance towards him he would snap out a front kick to the guys leading leg- stopping him immediately. Then with momentum, go in for the kill on the off balance foe.)

So with the arsenal of ass whooping techniques Bruce knew, he only used three. He won EVERY time just using these.

Do you see how that is with marketing? We are always trying to learn more and more and more, only to know too much. If you master just a few you could be the baddest mutha around.

Don’t always keep searching for the secret as you may already have the answer. TEST one theory, approach, style or idea at a time. It is very possible you do not need to read 20 books and go to 10 seminars to get "the great idea". Quit buying ebooks and other crap for a minute.

Also, use caution on marketing blogs. Most bloggers don’t talk about tried and true, they talk about theories. Question what their response has been using the idea they’re puking out. (really, ask them. You’ll be surprised at what they don’t know)

Everyone is an expert on the Internet, find out who is real and who is full of shit. Don’t waste your time with the wannabe’s .

Marketing is most effective when it is simple, not fancy or complicated. My most successful ad ever was mind numbingly simple. That ad made a quarter of a million dollars in sales and beat any ad that came before it.

Find out your ‘eye poke’ and master it. Next time your competition throws a punch, you will take him out fast.

go get some

Paul

P.S. if you have not got on my list yet- DO IT. I just alerted people to an awesome $2500 marketing course for nothing (it is over now). I caught wind of a $10,000 free course in December!

You will get treated with respect and you will get my ebook on 101 marketing ideas.

I don’t care what type of business you have, it is VITAL to have a list of people that showed interest in your product or service. Even if they did not buy.

Before I started working with online marketing, I never grasped this. I let hundreds maybe thousands of people over the years visit my site and leave. DUMB

At that time I had a window cleaning business and figured lists are for ebook pushers- WRONG! As you are well aware it is not easy to create an interest in your offering. Usually once we do get them to our site we drop the ball.

You must realize that people leave your site for a multitude of reasons. Many leave because they are not quite ready to purchase. The probelm with that is they forget, lose your website and forget your name.

Now when they are ready they contact whoever, leaving you without a new customer and without their hard to get moolah.

Most of you who are online or getting ready to release a product are well aware of this. For those of you who are running a local service, restaurant, store, whatever… you CAN use this effectively.

How? Glad you asked

You will need to find or create an incentive to get their opt-in. You could create a 7 page report on something relative to your offering. If you are a carpet cleaner a 7 page report on the dangers of allergens in the carpet would be good. If you have a restaurant maybe a free desert recipe. For a sporting goods store you could have a report on the best places to hunt and fish. You get the idea. It does not need to be incredible.

You can also find reports/ebooks from others to give away. (make sure they gave you the right to do so) Notice the sign up for the free ebook on my site? That’s how I get people to sign up.

You’re thinking  "great, but how do I get their email saved in my system?". Easy, sign up for a Aweber account (www.aweber.com). This will give you a fully functional database of people who signed up. Not only does it keep track of everyone it also allows an "opt-out" to protect you from being a Spammer.

Along with the protection you can also segrate your lists. You can put them into groups of a certain type if you wish.

My favorite feature is the personalized broadcasts. Let’s say you are having a early bird special for window cleaning. You simply create your broadcast message and send it to your list. It can list them by their name and use it as the salutation (i.e Hi Mark).

You can also create a follow up of messages to go out on any date you wish. You could write 6 months worth of emails today and put it on autopilot.

You will see who opened the email. You can see who clicked a link in the email and most importantly, you can immediatley find out what is not working so you can change it.

Aweber is only $19 a month and the very tool that million dollar marketers use. Don’t let any more money slip out of your pocket. You need to be on the cutting edge or you will be cut out.

go get some

Paul

Go CSI on Your Product or Service

Many marketers say to work on a killer offer first, then the rest of the ad. I do agree that an urgent and motivating offer can make an ad wickedly effective but, it needs to hook them first.

Offers lose to a hook because the offer is the action inducer, not the attention and interest getter. Most will not get to your offer.

What’s a hook? A hook is simply something interesting/unique about you or what you are selling.

If you sell online memberships, what is it about you or the site that is interesting? If you clean carpets, what makes you different from anyone else.

A hook to me is a spiced up USP. Something that makes you or your offer unique mixed with dramatic appeal. John Carlton is one of my favorite copywriters and a hook finding genius.

Let’s take a headline that Carlton did for a mundane and rather boring financial newsletter. Rather than write the typical sterile "Make Better Investments Using Our Proven Methods", he decided to go Columbo.

What he did was research all the material he could find. Buried in the material was a little quote from Money Magazine referring to this mutual funds wizard as a "human computer". I am sure you’re thinking that was all that was needed.

No, the hook was justified because this "human computer" in a typical quarter could crunch the numbers of 14,000 different companies offering stock… IN HIS HEAD!! So he could now talk about that in the copy.

The Headline?

"Mysterious Arizona "Human Computer" Humiliates Wall Street "Experts" For 21st Consecutive Year!"

I guarantee that grabs attention

That hook can now be the base for the entire ad. Now you are thinking that your carpet cleaning business is different. I have no super computer article to use. Maybe not, but you do have something.

Maybe the way you clean carpets destroys 96% of all allergens within the carpet. Maybe your a single father of three kids…

"Single Dad Protects His Children From Allergens And Now Offers to Keep Your Kids Safe Too"

Put that up against "Get $50 off Any Full Service Carpet Cleaning" and see which one gets more attention.

The single dad headline is true and now has a human interest side. How will the other generic ads out there compete with this guy?

You have a hook, I guarantee you do. You may need to dig into you or your product/service to find it. Write down a list of things that come to mind in your search. As you can see it could be very simple.

Make sure the copy in the ad resonates with the hook. Keep that interest intact. As soon as you get generic they’re gone.

The less interesting you find your product or service, the less interesting your ad will be. Get fired up about what you’ve got. In that aroused state of mind is when you want to start digging and writing.

Go get some

Paul