- You know who you're aiming at
- You know what you want them to do
- You have the media in mind - is it an ad, sales letter, leaflet, postcard etc.
- You have considered the delivery method
- You have thought about timescales
- You have thought about who deals with the responses
- You have thought about your value proposition and amended it if you have too
Now you are in a position to think about developing your headline.
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| There are other options than just discounting |
There are 15 tried and trusted formulas you can use - below are the 5 I start off with:
- Make it personal - Ideal for subject lines but also can be functional specific. So something like "Chris - we help writers like you to find new business" or "Other Sales Directors use our system to manage remote field sales staff"
- Include why - this helps with the justification process to move into the rest of the piece. I like to pose answers to questions which might be being asked. "Here are 5 reasons why my clients don't worry about content marketing" or "Why you might never know how much business you lost last month"
- The good old guarantee - This is great when you need to build credibility. " Save 30% or you'll get 100% refund" or "10% off your best quote -Guaranteed"
- Questions are good - they should get the reader to think about what they don't know or confirm what they do know but would prefer not to think about. "Do you dread having to make presentations?" or "How much time do you waste dealing with staff issues"
- Time waits for nobody - and the lack of it is a real motivator. "Discounts end on the 21st March" or "On average we save your staff 2 hours a week - every week"
Use the above formulas to create 5 headlines and see which suits your needs the best. Then start to work with your top 2 or 3.
Tomorrow I'll describe the process you need you go through to build the supporting copy for your headline.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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