WHAT'S IN A HEADLINE?

W/C 495

HEADLINES

The trouble with advertising via the internet is that there is no body language involved. When you are talking to someone face to face your body language tells your prospect a lot about you as a person. A good salesman will sell himself before he starts to sell a product.

Where does that leave the internet salesperson? He/She cannot see the prospect. To the prospect you are just a stranger who wants to take up some of his/her valuable time to talk about something that they are probably not interested in. How are you going to attract their attention? You can’t go up to the prospect and introduce yourself. (You are invisible.) You must use your headline. Your advert must have a compelling headline. Something that will stop him in his tracks. Something that will make him take a closer look.

What makes a good headline, either on an email or on any other written advert? As a rule it is something that is of interest to that particular person. Something that gives a hint that it will be worth their while to inquire further..
Just suppose that you were advertising a website dealing with container gardening. You would most likely publish it in a gardening e-magazine with perhaps a readership of 10,000. We will assume that 5,000 never read the adverts anyway.

Leaving us with only 5,000 who will scan the ads out of curiosity. Amongst those 5,000, who we assume are interested in gardening. How many of them are interested in ‘container gardening’? These are the ones that we must attract. Our headline must be aimed directly at this minor proportion of the subscribers to the magazine. We are in what we call a ‘niche’ market’. The headline must be aimed directly at this niche. It must contain words that attract the attention of those ‘Container gardeners’

What I am attempting to show is that just because you publish your advert in a magazine with 10,000 subscribers. If your business is a niche within a much broader subject, Such as Container Gardening within the broader subject of Gardening in general. Your headline must be capable of attracting the attention of the smaller group of people that your advert is aimed at.

A better idea is to find ezines that deal exclusively with the niche that you want to promote. It is what we call ‘Targeted Marketing’. If you can do that, you can be sure that you have a very responsive audience who will be sure to at least read your advert. The more people who read it, the more chances you have of making sales.

It is a proven fact that an ad with a compelling headline with indifferent subject matter will perform better than one with an indifferent headline but superb text and graphics. The moral of the story is to practice writing headlines. For every advert write at least ten different headlines and pick the very best one for publication.
Robert J Farey
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BOB’S PROFILE
Bob has been working on the internet in various capacities since 2000. He uses ezines and articles to market his products simply because, done the right way, it works.
You will find his latest venture at: http://www.rjf08.com "It’s a no brainer."

R J Farey.

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