Your headline is the most important part of your sales letter. If you are unable to get your prospect’s attention and persuade them to keep reading, you will not make any sales. In fact, the headline is said to account for about eighty percent of the success of your web sales copy. The important thing is to grab attention, compel the reader to keep reading, and to tell a story that will help the prospect to see themselves using your product or service.
An attention grabbing headline will get you off to an excellent start with your sales copy. There are many headlines that have been used over and over, including:
- They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play…
- Who else wants to…
- Give me (period of time) and I’ll show you how to (achieve a specific goal)
I recommend writing as many headlines as possible until you write some that tell exactly what you want to convey to your prospect. This takes practice, but it will definitely improve over time.
Compelling the reader to continue reading is done by making sure that your copy flows well. You can do this by reading out loud to another person to see how it sounds. Think of your copy as a story that begins and ends, and this will make it even more compelling. Start by discussing the problem, then tell how this problem got worse, and finally, share the solution to the problem (your product or service). Remember that you are a problem solver, first and foremost.
Storytelling is the very best way to do this. Introduce yourself at the beginning, and tell the story of where you were when you first had to deal with the problem. By writing as though you were telling the story to a friend, the reader gets pulled in to the details and drawn in to wanting to know the solution. The idea is that they must see themselves as a part of the solution for this to be effective.
As you can see, headlines are important to the success of your sales letter, but compelling the reader to stay on the page and sharing the story of how the problem can be solved are also an integral part of making your web sales copy work and bring you many sales of your products and services.
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