Copywriting Tips – The Secret Of Good Headlines

In copywriting, what is a good headline? Well a good headline must excite your reader, it must connect with them in some way, it must be relevant to them, it must fire up their ambitions, awaken their dreams their desires and make them read on.
In marketing that’s what copywriting is all about, getting your prospective customer to read your copy, good copywriting means being able to connect with the prospective customer, understand them and offer the benefits that will satisfy their desires.
Your headline must make the reader think that it’s written specifically with them in mind, in other words your headline is not about your product; it’s about your customer. The object of your headline is to help generate sales by connecting with the reader in such a way that the thought of ignoring it is totally eliminated.
So the secret to good copywriting and in particular good headlines is to:
Know your product … Know your customer.
So let’s assume that you have now identified your target market, you need to write your headline aimed specifically at them. So how do we do that? Well before we start let me explain how a headline is made up.
A headline normally contains 3 parts, the first line, called the ‘over-line’. The middle line or lines are called the ‘main headline’. And the last line called the ‘main subhead’.
Now I normally write my headlines in three parts as explained above. In other words I write down all the ideas I can come up with, keeping in mind the wants of my target market (customers). I can end up with around 20 first lines or ‘over-lines’, I do the same thing for the ‘main headline’ and the ‘main subhead’.
I go into great detail regarding headlines, amongst other copywriting skills in my new course ‘The Rules of Copywriting’, you can download this free for a limited period, see below for details.
Now once you have come up with a list of opening lines for your header, go through them and pick the one you consider the most appropriate, the one you think is most likely to grab the readers attention. You can involve your family and friends in this, explain the product to them and ask which opening line of your header would most attract them, which would inspire them to find out more and read on.
Now the opening line that you have come up with, or indeed the headline itself, is not written in stone, by that I mean that your present best attempt to come up with a compelling line or headline may not be the one you end up using.
You may be watching TV or reading the newspaper when a blockbuster headline pops into your mind. This often happens to me, should this happen to you then write it down immediately, some of the most brilliant headlines are born this way.
So just to recap.
1) You must know your product, you must be passionate about it, you must believe in it, you need to know every possible benefit that your product offers, and above all, it must do what you claim it does.
2) You must know your customer, you must establish your target market, you must find out all you can about your potential customer, you must try to imagine their problems, worries, dreams and their goals in life.
3) Your headline must be about the customer not your product, it should state the most powerful benefit using the most powerful words most suited to your target market (more about the most powerful words in my free course).
Remember one very important fact when composing your headline:
People do not buy products, they buy the BENEFITS that the product can give them.