Recycle Your Headlines!
October 29, 2009
I’m on my way back from a program in Las Vegas (I mean literally on my way back – I’m on Delta Flight 1088, on approach to Atlanta) and we had great keynote and breakout sessions with about 200 people from the college bookstore profession.
People who attended both sessions got both our high-level marketing strategies and the nuts-and-bolts” details of exactly what needs to be included in an effective marketing message. And one of the most important of these is the Killer Headline.
The purpose of the headline is to get the prospect to read the next line – nothing more. Of course crafting an effective headline is kind of an art form. There are many ways people do this, including sitting down and writing 100 headlines before even starting to work on the body copy.
But I’ve found that the easiest way to get a great headline is to look at what people have done successfully in the past, and use that as a starting point for creating my own. And I shared exactly that strategy with the people in my session this morning.
For example, I showed them a web page from the “Magnificent Menopause” site that offered a free report entitled, Exposed: Five Menopause Myths! Then I instantly read the very same headline out loud, substituting “bookstore” for “menopause”: Exposed: Five Bookstore Myths! …and watched as half the audience madly scribbled that headline down to use in their own marketing.
And you can do that with any of the “classic” headlines: They All Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano…Until I started to Play! becomes They All Laughed When I told Them I Actually Saved Money at the College Bookstore…Until I Showed Them the Receipt!
The real message here is that you don’t have to start from scratch and reinvent the wheel every time you sit down to write an ad or sales letter. There are lots of resources available – including our own Business Self-Defense™ 90-Day Success Program – that can give you a library of samples to draw on.
Marketing is difficult enough to begin with – why not take advantage of all the resources you have available to you?
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