Copywriting Bedrock - How To Craft A Winning Headline And A Persuasive Title
Your copywriting project rises or falls with the headline (otherwise called title in case of article writing). Most copywriters believe that 85% of your brainstorming, time and effort should be spent on trying to weave compelling headlines. This applies to your banner advertising, pay per click ads, book
In the arena of copywriting, learning to write a compelling headline is a brain artwork. The more you write sales copies, the better you get at it. Majority of the time, your inspiration is jump started by watching and learning from other winning sales letter piece or learning from other copywriters.
For instance, the legendary copywriter, Robert Collier took a book that sold a couple of hundred copies and converted it to a best-seller (sold 200,000 copies) within one year just by changing the title and nothing else.
Apart from learning from other copywriters, use SEO principles and common sense copywriting rules in crafting your sales copy. The first thing to do as a copywriter is to incorporate one or two of your targeted keywords in your sales letter headlines. Eliminate stop (words like: and, for, about, with, a, and in) as much as possible. Search Engines do not index these words.
Therefore, make your sales copy headline as short as possible. Make the title sweet, attractive and to the point. This is where common sense, brainstorming, knowledge of English and your word vocabulary come in. If you are not sure, brainstorm, test, tweak and track as much as possible. I sometimes write several titles (working titles) and let market forces like click through rate determine which is better by the feedback I receive.
I must say that you don’t just incorporate keywords into your sales copy headlines or title; Your headlines should be an integral part of your keyword research. For instance, I test different article titles as part of my market research and see which one pulls more readership. I can also ask friends and neutral people to evaluate my titles based on their preference as readers.
In copywriting, there are words that are already proven winners. Incorporate these words in your sales copywriting instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. You can adopt and adapt; originality not withstanding. Not just what you say but how you say it is the key to crafting fresh-sounding headlines. Words like ‘how to,’ ‘secret,’ ‘seven,’ ‘success,’ and other tried and tested phrases that make promises and have been sales letter winners over the years. This is where your knowledge of copywriting history comes in as well as knowledge of human psychology especially emotion of greed, need and fear. Humans also like the easy and lazy way. So break down information in chunks with the use of numbers. Example: “Master the Seven Golden Keys of Success.” Here I have incorporated both Seven and Success. The brain learns information in chunks or quanta.
You can also use a shocking statistics or an intriguing question to arouse human curiosity—a powerful bedfellow to emotional copywriting. For example, “Is Money God? If not Let’s Quit Worshipping It.” This is a good title that will make people read your book or draw prospects to your offer because money is a problem to many people. It is always good to tie your sales letter title to a prevailing problem or market buzz. This will answer or offer a solution to a nagging question in the mind of your target audience.
In a nutshell, there are different ways to craft a winning headline and thus a winning sales letter in your copywriting project. And no two copywriters are alike. Crafting title is like writing your signature. Go with the imprint of your human spirit where creativity and wit and wisdom reside. Make promises, use catchy phrases, and appeal to human psychology. Humans are by nature selfish and egocentric. Learn from human behavior and feed human need or creed in your sales letter copywriting promotions. Because of this understanding, I had to change the title of my book on “Biblical Meditation” to “Success Secrets of Christian Meditation.” This was after I went back and did keyword research. Christian Meditation is more popular in search queries and the two magic words “Success and Secrets” make the book title more attractive because everybody wants success and its secrets.
Uzo Onukwugha to discuss headlines and titles in your sales letter copywriting. For more information on direct response copywriting for the internet subscribe to his popular web copywriting tips–Free.
Tags: Byline., Sales letter Headlines, Topic Sentence