Writing Headlines

One of the most critical elements of successful copywriting is the headline. In fact, despite the fact that it’s only a few words, it can have the biggest impact on the success (or failure) of your marketing efforts.

There’s two ways to write headlines. The first is to brew a pot of coffee and sit in a quiet room and let creativity take over (which usually results in staring at a blinking cursor on a blank page for a couple hours) before you come up with a decent headline.

The second is to use a formula to quickly create several options that you can TEST to find the one that performs the best. My science sense always tingles at the mention of formulas and testing, so this is the one I go for.

In marketing, there’s no sense trying to reinvent the wheel, so I’m a huge fan of shortcuts to get things done. This is a formula that I’m taking absolutely zero credit for, as I’m sure I stole it from one marketer or another, who probably heard it from Dan Kennedy’s moustache.

But anyway, here’s the magic headline formula:

Incredibly GOOD, without Incredibly BAD

This formula ties in to the two main human motivators:

• Pursuit of Pleasure
• Avoidance of Pain

Now let’s break that down and come up with a couple examples.

The incredibly GOOD portion of the headline is the big promise that you’re delivering, the outcome that your prospect is really hoping to achieve.

Something they want to see in their lives. In the weight loss market it would be to melt away stubborn belly fat. Dating could be how to approach and talk to any woman anywhere. Marketing could be writting effective headlines.

You know what it is for your market, the thing they’d ask a genie for, something they don’t currently have but desperately want.