Lesser Known Secrets of Getting Buying Customers to Come To You

I just fin­ished read­ing an excit­ing chap­ter from Suc­cess Secrets of the Online Mar­ket­ing Super­stars by Mitch Mey­er­son.  The par­tic­u­lar chap­ter I read is called “The Mag­i­cal Power of Head­lines” by David Garfinkel.

David is extremely suc­cess­ful at writ­ing “copy” for sell­ing prod­ucts, so he is a good per­son to pay atten­tion to and lis­ten to his advice.  Check out his copy­writ­ing site to find out how good copy can make cus­tomers inter­ested in what you have to sell — whether it is a prod­uct, web site, or blog.

In the chap­ter, David says that great head­lines are what dri­ves peo­ple to your “door”, so to speak.  In fact, he claims 75% — 90% of an advertisement’s effec­tive­ness comes from the head­line!  With­out a good head­line, your chance of suc­cess are nearly zero.

He says head­lines have to:

• set the tone for what prospects are about to read
• cre­ate a mood so they will be recep­tive to action
• invite them to read more of your sales copy, arti­cle, or site

How do you over­come prob­lems that poorly writ­ten head­lines suf­fer?  Poor headlines…

• Do not answer the “who cares” test.  Your head­line needs to evoke emo­tion and promise some­thing your cus­tomer sees as valuable.
• Try to be cutesy or obscure.  Don’t make your head­line cute or obscure because they usu­ally don’t lead to action.  You need to get into their shoes and “feel their pain” by writ­ing a head­line that directly applies to their burn­ing need or desire.
• Focus more on them­selves rather than cus­tomer needs.  Only write head­lines that mean some­thing to the cus­tomer, not just to you.  While it might be great that your web site is endorsed by some author­ity, you need to tell them how your site or ser­vice will ben­e­fit them — and now rather than later.

Now that I’ve talked up the the­ory, I’ll let you in on a short­cut to writ­ing effec­tive head­lines.  You can take exist­ing effec­tive head­lines and change them to fit your prod­uct or ser­vice pitch.  Here are a few:

• The secret of {ben­e­fit of your prod­uct or service}
• Now you can have {ben­e­fit of your prod­uct or service}
• Get rid of {their prob­lem} once and for all

You see how easy it can be?

Check out theis arti­cle at Copyblogger.com for more excel­lent examples:

• How to cre­ate Mag­netic Headlines

Also, here are head­line resources from David Garfinkel:

• Adver­tis­ing Head­lines that Make You Rich
• Killer Copy Tactics

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