How 9/11 Forced Me To Come Up With A Fantastic Headline

Shortly after 9/11 I went on a teacher-training course.  There were quite a few people there - men and women - but mostly women.

Now picture this, I'm a Muslim guy - a practising Muslim guy - with a beard, and I wear a hat.

As you can imagine, all eyes fell on me as I walked into the classroom.  And the looks I was getting weren't very welcoming.  The women, in particular, were staring daggers at me.

You see, my beard and hat were my 'headline' as I walked in, and everyone there figured they already knew what I was about and what was coming.  I could see it in their eyes.

Anyway, as a general icebreaker, the instructor gave us a line and asked us to complete it (no, not a white line, silly).

The line was:  "If I won the national lottery I would..."

As we went around the room everyone said the usual - "...go on a world cruise", or, "...buy a Rolls Royce", etc.  You get the picture, right?

I knew I'd have to change my headline, the one I walked into the room with, and give everyone there an indication of the person I really am.

So, when it came to my turn I said, "If I won the national lottery I would... be very surprised... because I've never bought a ticket in my life".

The whole class erupted into laughter.

I got my winning headline.  After that it was all downhill.

Not only did everyone want to get to know me, they were happy to be part of my group.  As it turned out, the instructor placed me in a group with two women, one of whom was giving me particularly nasty stares at the beginning.

After my intro, she was happy to be in my group.

The rest of the course went extremely well, with me leading my team for the two days we were there.

And the icing on the cake?

After the course ended, the instructor mentioned that a small number of people, a very few, would be getting distinctions.  When I received my diploma a few weeks later, I found I was one of those people.

When I look back I realise that if I had not come up with a good 'headline' I may have had a very unpleasant time there.

And no one would have wanted to find out any more about me.  Which is what the headline is supposed to do - make people want to find out more.

Best,
Rezbi

How to Write Headlines That Sell Your Products and Make You Money

I'm sitting here tired and falling asleep.  Too tired to write but, here goes nothing...

When you write a headline, make sure it's alive.

Give the reader a reason to feel restless… stir his emotions… pique his interest till he can’t bear it, and he just has to read on to see what’s coming next.

A headline, of course, is… AN AD FOR YOUR AD! Gary Halbert

Your headline should demand to be read. It should stop your reader in his tracks and create an irresistible desire to read further and find out more.

On the average, 5 times as many people read the headlines as the body copy. It follows that unless your headline sells, you’ve wasted 90% of your money. David Ogilvy

The right headline can mean the difference between doubling your readership, and more. According to John Caples, one headline increased sales by 19 times against another.

When one advert brings in twice as many responses as another, despite the only difference being the headline, it stands to reason one headline is alive and the other is dead. And, when something is alive it can go to work and get results. If it’s dead, it can’t do anything.

…Your headline is the most important part of your website Michel Fortin

This is a fact regardless of where your advertising is - whether it’s online, in a magazine or a newspaper, or anywhere else. The principles of advertising are the same everywhere. There may be minor changes required from one medium to another, as in print or on television, but the principles will remain the same.

What your headline must do is to grab your prospect by the eyeballs and keep them glued to your advert. And, by the law of averages, if more people read your ad, then more will respond.

When writing your headline you always need to keep in mind that everyone is busy. Especially with the internet, no one really wants to read any more as they used to.

So you will have to ensure your headline is like the proverbial arrow that hits your reader right between the eyes. It’s got to be so interesting to your reader he can’t tear his eyes away. When you can manage that, you know you’ve hit the bullseye.

And you don’t get a second chance to hit that bullseye. Once your prospect loses interest and leaves - that’s it, end of story.

So here’s what you need to do – according to John Caples there are three types of headlines you should be looking to write if you want it to be successful:

1. Self-interest - This type of headline is the best as it involves something that appeals to his interest, his desires. Remember that all he cares about is what he gets out of it.


2. News – This can be something that is new, or a new angle on something old. Combine this one with something which is of interest to your reader and you could have a home run.


3. Curiosity – As the name suggest, this is the type of headline which piques the interest of your reader. This type of headline, while it can work, is more of a gamble. If the reader is curious he may or may not bother to read it as it does not appeal to his selfish wants.

Remember that the headline needs to make a big promise. You can’t afford to mess around here by trying to be funny -- or clever -- or arrogant – and you certainly should not make any assumptions of your reader. He doesn’t have to read your copy at all. So you need to give him a bloody good reason to take time out of his busy day to read your ad.

Take a look at these headlines (taken from John Caples’ Tested Advertising Methods)

1. "NO... NO... DON’T CALL ON ME!"


2. THE ODDS ARE 9 TO 1 AGAINST YOU


3. "I’LL NEVER GIVE ANOTHER PARTY," SHE SOBBED


4. A TEST OF HOW "WELL READ" YOU ARE


5. IS WORRYING ROBBING YOU OF THE GOOD THINGS OF LIFE?

And how about Yahoo!’s latest offering:

This time it’s personal. It’s y!ou

Now, I don’t know about you, but the only thing to go through my mind when I saw that was, "What!?"

When you think that this excuse for an ad is actually competing with successful one’s it makes you wonder how long this company will stay in business with advertising like that.

I’ll bet the advertising agency has made enough to survive for some time, though.

What it boils down to is this, if these adverts fail to capture the attention of the intended audience, then the ad has failed. That’s all there is to it.

Not one of these headlines makes any big promises. None contains anything that promises any benefit to the reader, nor do they offer any news.

So keep that in mind – if you want your headline to succeed, make sure it promises something to the reader. Make sure it works on his emotions – his wants and his desires.

Oh, one last thing, unlike with my blog, when I write a sales letter I take a heck of a lot longer to come up with a healined.  Not a few minutes, or even a few hours. It can take days... and involve a LOT of writing.

Best,
Rezbi

A Conversation On Advertising With David Ogilvy

John Crichton interviews David Ogilvy in 1977. This full interview is full of advertising gems.

Best,
Rezbi

A Conversation On Advertising With David Ogilvy

John Crichton interviews David Ogilvy in 1977. This full interview is full of advertising gems.

Best,
Rezbi

Leo Burnett - Advertising Genius

A hearfelt speech during a company holiday by one of the true giants of advertising.

Best,
Rezbi

Can You Guess Why These Headlines Were So Successful?

I was going to go deeper into writing headlines today, but I thought I'd do a little something different first.

A big part of being a good copywriter lies in being able to figure out why some things work and some things don't.  By knowing that it's easier to reverse engineer good copy and use it to your advantage when writing your own copy, instead of just swiping all the time.

So, I'm going to list a few well-known headlines and see who can come up with the best explanation as to why it worked.

Some of these are very well known others maybe not so much.  However, what I will say is, they were all successful headlines and made a bundle of cash for the advertiser concerned.

Here they are:

1. A Little Mistake That Cost A Farmer $3,000 A Year


2. How to Win Friends and Influence People


3. Do You Make These Mistakes in English?


4. Why Some Foods 'Explode' in Your Stomach


5. Whose Fault When Children Disobey?

Why do YOU think they were successful?  What I can tell you is, in all cases the explanation is a real simple one.  Think about why the headline appeals to you.

Try as many as you can, but don't cheat by looking them up.  You can use this to test your own copywriting skills.

I'll give you my take on why I think they were hits next week.  I'll also be going into the anatomy of a headline, and it'll be quite in-depth.

I'm moving around a lot so I'll be posting about once a week, unless I can get around to writing more.

Best,
Rezbi

How Advertising Agencies Come Up With Award Winning Campaigns?

You couldn't make it up if it wasn't true, could you.

Regain The Lost Millions

This piece is about millions of pounds that are wasted every year - needlessly.

It all starts with that wonderful word "strategy". There's a lot of hot air about it in marketing.

The word comes from the Greek for general. What does it mean?

Using your forces to achieve an objective as effectively as possible:

In business, that means getting the maximum profit with the minimum necessary effort and cost.

Or in the words of former Coca Cola marketing boss, Sergio Zyman, "Selling more stuff more often to more people at higher prices"

Most marketers spend prodigious time and effort looking for business, whilst ignoring money that's just waiting to be picked up - money we already have within our grasp, but don't realise it, or forget it.

The prime example: enquiries you have received, but don't try to convert with enough determination, intelligence or vigour.

Let me explain - and see if you agree.

Sounds sensible - but is crazy

Compare two communications.

One is a mailing or e-mail to people a marketer thinks might be prospects. "Cold" prospects.

The marketer has put an immense amount of effort into it. It's got every trick in the book, because getting a response from someone you don't know is hard. Makes sense, right?

The other is a reply to someone who's enquired about something. A brochure or other material and a letter thanking the respondent for the enquiry and suggesting they read the brochure and order now.

If it's being done on-line it will be a simple thank you and a suggestion to visit the website

This is a much easier task, as the respondent has already expressed interest. So that makes sense, right?

Wrong, wrong, wrong - a thousand times WRONG!

Because what seems to make sense is in fact senseless.

And that is where the vanishing millions are.

For though it is indeed true that selling cold is harder than selling to warm enquirers, it is even more true that the EASY money is amongst those warm enquiries.

So more effort, not less, should be applied to them. They really deserve every trick in the book. They have raised their hands and said, "I'm here! I'm interested! Come and get me!"

They are infinitely more likely to reply. Just consider: for one of our clients a cold mailing might get .1% response - and that would be a good result. If someone had enquired they might get five times that percentage

In fact I bet there is more money lying around waiting to be picked up because of this than anywhere else in your business. And not just because many take these enquiries for granted as "easy" sales and don't try hard enough.

But also because they don't follow them up enough - which you should do, as one of my favourite clients put it, "until they give in".

Because they will buy when they want to buy - not when it suits you.

To sum up:

If you want more than your fair share of the lost millions -

1. Put more effort into enquiry responses than into cold mailings


2. Follow up until it doesn't pay any more.

So there are two thoughts for you.

Best - and thanks to those who have sent kind messages.

Drayton

P.S.  This is the sixth of Drayton Bird’s 101 free helpful marketing ideas.  You can sign up on the link below for the rest.

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Website: http://www.draytonbird.com / www.eadim.com

Click here to get 101 free helpful marketing ideas. Marketers from all over the world think they’re a pot of gold.

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How to Ensure Your Sales Message Gets Read

No one reads your advert just for the sake of reading it.  If you want your reader to continue to read your advertising, give him a reason to do so.  Otherwise he will take one look and switch off.  You'd be surprised by the numbers of ads which actually do just that.

When you write a sales letter, don't make it so blatantly obvious you're selling something.  And certainly do NOT make it dull.

You cannot bore people into buying your product.  You can only interest them in buying it. David Ogilvy

What you want to ensure is to write your advert in such a way as to ensure your reader's attention is grabbed... and kept.  This is what increases the value of your advert: The fact that people actually remain interested in it from the headline to the subhead; from the subhead to the first paragraph; from the first paragraph to the next.  And so on.

As you can see from the paragraph, the sales message begins with the headline.  If your headline can grab your reader’s attention by the eyeballs, and keep hold of it, 80 to 90 percent of the job of the ad is accomplished.

... the headline is 50 to 75 percent of the advert. John Caples

David Ogilvy went even further. He said:

On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.  It follows that unless your headline sells your product, you have wasted 90 percent of your money.

When you take into account the fact your headline is competing with other headlines, especially if your advert is in a print magazine or newspaper, you can see why it's even more important to get it right.

One way to ensure you have a successful headline is to ensure it contains some news element.  You could announce a new product; a new way of doing something which already exists or a new way of making use of it; a new way of saving money.   Or basically anything with news which pulls at the heartstrings of your reader: An emotional desire.

Whatever it is you say you need to make a big promise.  As far as your reader is concerned it has to be worth his while taking the time to stop everything else and reading your message.

Leave your comments and let me know what you think.

Best,
Rezbi