Why A Headline Can Make Or Break A Sales Letter

When a reader first lands on your page, the first thing she will see is your headline, which will most likely be in a large, bolded, red or dark blue font. Before she reads about your product’s benefits, before she falls under the influence of your persuasion, before she contemplates whether or not she needs your product, she will read this headline.
If the headline is gripping, she will have to continue reading–if only to satisfy her curiosity. If the headline is good, but not great, she may feel compelled to read on. And if the headline is mediocre, she’ll quickly decide that nothing can be contained from reading the rest; and she’ll happily close the page and move on with her life.
As an Internet marketer, you cannot afford to discourage readers before they even wade into the text of your argument. You have to grip them early and firmly, so they have no interest in escaping; and are far too compelled by desire or curiosity to look away.
And that’s exactly what a good headline will do for you.
When it comes to writing a good headline, technique is important. Indeed, it may sound strange, but the best headlines often flow from formulas, rather than from pure creativity. And, for this reason, it is important to know what those formulas are.
Below, I highlight 10 of the most frequently used techniques for writing good sales letter headlines:
1. Use psychological triggers. These are words like scientifically-proven, shocking, explosive, secret, and free. They activate people’s minds and generate interest in a way that other words simply cannot.
2. Keep your headline short and crisp. Ideally, your headline should leave readers wanting for more–not wishing there had been less. Keep things short, crisp, and intriguing, rather than long, dull, and droning.
3. Keep things formulaic. Rather than trying something experimental and creative, open with something like “How would you like to…” or “Did you know that 9/10 marketers never…” Just make sure that you complete those lines in a way that is shocking or intriguing.
4. Open your headline with “Put an end to your [problem] once and for all.” It’s succinct, clear, and gets at the heart of the matter: that the readers have a problem and you can tell them how to solve it.
5. Avoid intentionally misinforming. When your only objective is to get page views, it may make sense to create headlines that are misleading. To see that this works, look at any online version of a major newspaper. The titles often will involve some type of intentionally misleading play on words that will entice you to click. However, when it comes to sales letters, your goal is to close the deal, so don’t mislead people into believing they will find something different–only to let them down when you should be closing a sale instead.
6. State the biggest benefit your product offers. For instance, let’s say that your product will help webmasters to get more traffic, but more specifically, it will allow them to improve their SERPs on Google by 1-2 pages for keywords that get as many as 500,000 searches per month. Then state this benefit compactly in the headline.”
7. Write your headline in the fashion of a news headline. For instance, you could say something like “California woman finds strategy for quadrupling your organic search engine traffic every two weeks.”
8. Start your headline with “How to…” It may seem simple, but it is truly one of the best formulas for retaining readers’ interest.
9. Use the word “you” at least once in the headline. Speaking to readers directly will draw them into the sales letter; and make them more likely to continue on after the headline.
10. Use large, bold, red or dark blue font for your headline. Dark blue has been shown to put readers at easy; and often causes them to stay on the page longer. Red, on the other hand, elevates blood pressure slightly and pushes people to take action.
As a copywriter, you should try to mix and match these headline-writing techniques. Observe what works best for you over time; and keep that part of the headline. Also, find out what does work and discard it.
The better you get at identifying and discarding weak parts of your headlines, the better you will getting a writing high-converting sales letters.