A headline that nails it!

You have probably heard me say before that the most important part of any advertisement or email is the headline or the subject line. It’s the same with a radio or television advertisement.

And why is that?

Very simply because it’s what gets people’s attention. The headline, the grabber, is 80% of the effectiveness of whatever you’re writing.

In fact, when I’m writing copy I generally try and create the headline first and then tell the story of the headline.

It really works for me!

I guess it’s because, one day when I was a kid, my teacher said she was going to teach us how to write a composition. She wrote three titles on the board something like “My holiday at the beach“, “What I did on my holidays” and “My trip to the zoo.” I chose one of them and just wrote my story and, when I got to the end of it, I was finished.

So that’s what you do when you write an advertisement or email. You just tell the story of the headline and, when you have finished your story, you’re done.

In any event, today I heard one of the best headlines for a radio advertisement. A man said, “I’ve been married for 15 years and I’ve got some advice for you. Try before you buy…“

I’ll betcha it got the attention of every listener who heard the headline because it sounded like something I had to know about. I reckon the rest of the audience would feel the same. The rest of the advert was all about trying a mattress before you buy and my interest waned because I wasn’t interested in buying a mattress. However, the headline had done its job as it got my attention and breathlessly hanging on for the rest of the advertisement.

So here’s a rule: When you’re writing any sort of copy that you want to get your audience to read spend most of your time on creating a headline that gets attention.

Once you have their attention make the rest of the story interesting and you can drag them by the nose through the rest of it.