Unlock the million-dollar headline in your brain:

Original title: Can you write a better headline than me?

 

I shouldn't have told him I was doing this challenge...

 

 

Challenge Winner: David “Doc” Polczynski

Dave just took down his long-standing website, or I’d link you to him. He’s slammed busy right now with copy work anyway, so if you reached him–you’d only get to chat him up for the fun of it… and I can tell you, it’s fun.

For the record, no one used the topic of the post to unravel the secret to the challenge, and so (I’m about to sound smug) no one actually beat my original.

Not even close.

I’m busy for a few days writing a white paper on “mobile app development platforms” for a very cool Denver web lab, so you’ll have to be patient, but I promise… by week’s end, I will post a follow-up. I plan to share in detail what makes for the perfect headline/title for this post. I’ve had a long list of alternates myself, used in various places on the web–I will review those, plus all the challenge entries, and play coach as best I can.

Thanks to all who visited, especially you folks who played the game. Congrats again to Dave! I’m going to leave this post unaltered from here down. Please note…

This challenge is expired.

 

 

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FREE Tip Sheet: Discover, Perfect and Unleash Your Best-Ever Customer Testimonials

Can you craft a seriously (ie, scientifically) great headline?

I’ve got a freebie for you that says, “we’ll see about that.” Submit your own alternate headline for this post (as a comment) by Sunday, May 17 2009 at midnight Mountain Time. In your comment, briefly defend your headline based on points we cover in this post. When you also supply an email address I can use to deliver your “Best Testimonials” Tip Sheet, you will receive that within 48 hours of your “live” approved post.

If I replace my headline with yours on May 18, you win a $10 iTunes gift code by email.

NEW Grand Prize! Update: I’m raising the stakes… once this challenge expires, I will pick a “best of” from the entries and replace my own headline above with the winner. If that’s YOUR headline, you will also win a $10 iTunes Gift Code by email. So, don’t forget to include a valid email address (FYI, I do NOT have a mailing list of any kind, and I do not sell, rent, trade or give away your addy).

 

 

 

 

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• Reading time: about 4-5 minutes

Your copywriting power lesson for today is #5 in a series: I’m re-reading one of the most widely venerated and applied short texts on the subject. If you don’t have a copy, click the title below to read my review and get a link to order yours from Amazon (for what it’s worth–no, I’m not an affiliate):

Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins

Pick your hot lead out of the crowd in 7 seconds, or go home.

Nobody reads the whole newspaper. Well, maybe my dad does. Yeah, I think he does. But those folks are rare, and when it comes to reading ads in some content media the rule is:

Your ad response rate (and ad cost per response) begins when you catch the attention of the right audience. Yes, you could use “blind/mass” message headlines like you see everywhere in brand awareness marketing. If your product or service can legitimately appeal to the masses then there may even be some value in doing that. But in general, when you rely willy-nilly on this approach, you are wasting most of your ad budget.

It’s like saying, “Hey, you.” And then pitching your ad copy at the random whoever that turns his head. When you could instead be saying, “Hey, Mike.” Or getting ever more and more specific in your targeted headline…

“Hey, Young Single Working Mom!”

“Hey, Busy Homeowner Guy Who Wants to
Spend Less on Having the Best Yard on the Block…”

However you need to word it, your headline should more-or-less say that sort of thing. Craft a well-targeted headline, or haphazardly toss the marketing equivalent of “Hey, you” into today’s crowded-beyond-belief message stream. What’s the difference? In cold, hard numbers:

You could boost response to ANY ad by a whopping 500-1,000 percent.

In the book, Hopkins admits to a practice I started doing years ago, as a copy cub. I scored a lot of ridicule for it at first, until I tracked an ad I was testing and showed my team the results. My headline was the test’s only variable. First, I shared my list of headlines; it was long, a couple dozen versions–some very different, others quite subtle variations by only one or two words. After they snickered at me for having already culled that list from a longer set of close to fifty headlines, I asked them to vote for their favorites. Then I dropped the bomb that silenced the infidels:

My test data came to life on the big screen in our conference room…

The winning headline was a simple, dull-ish version no one had voted for.

Not even me. In my early testing, I’d mixed it up just to be fair. And of all the talking points we could identify for the product in question, what finally attracted more of our target customers than any other was a feature we had initially thought was “nice, but not really a show-stopper.”

What was Claude’s headline habit? Writing a ton of ‘em. In this chapter, he says (note: I’ve slightly revised the text into first person for a bit of punch; apologies, C.H.)–

 

“I spend far more time on headlines than on writing. I often spend hours on a single headline. Often, I discard scores of headlines before I select the right one. For the entire return from an ad depends on attracting the right sort of readers.”

 

 

He goes on to share that he once tested (over time) a single ad with nearly two thousand headlines.

As a direct result of my self-nurtured obsession with powerful headlines, I’ve learned some more really valuable copywriting tricks. Here, let me freely share:

1. Match body copy to test results: Your product/service offers many benefits to the end user. Once you’ve tested many headlines for each key benefit, and analyzed the data (testing ain’t testing until you do something with the info)… create a ranked order of those benefits by test response, and adjust the ad’s body copy to match this ranking–in the order those benefits appear, in the overall weight of each in terms of repetition, space, size, etc.
2. From benefits, move to offers: Your marketing budget funds many possible offers you can also test with headlines. Price point, coupons, bundles, premiums, continuity packaging… don’t get me started! Use every prospect audience segment you can to work out as much knowledge as you can about the way your target customer responds.

Depending on the size of your database or ad circulation, your message could be in front of millions of potential buyers today. Our first take-away point here is this: most of those folks don’t need what you’ve got, so don’t waste your time and money trying to convince them they do. Your second FREE headline bullet tip ($500,000 value, figured somewhat conservatively for most professional marketers) is right here:

Those millions of people won’t read your body copy to see if what you offer is for them–they already decided in the first 7 seconds it took them to skim your headline. So build maximum targeted aim into that one moment.

Next time, in Chapter 6, Claude explores the science of psychology. Oooh, deep.

Until then… Write what’s Right,

KG

P.S. For the record: In my headline for this post, I did NOT write up dozens of headlines (because I’m not running a test). But I did make some effort to “flag” my target audience. You are more likely to click through to read my opening copy if you  a) fancy yourself a headline writer or  b) think you’d like to become one; also, the wording as a competitive dare raises the issue of proof and teases the challenge I posed at the beginning. Here it is again…

P.P.S Have you got a great headline for this post? Share it with us here, and I will GIVE you my personal “tip sheet” for crafting great testimonials (bonus: I don’t copyright the tip sheet, so you can turn around and share it with your audience!). I use this two-page “quick guide” almost constantly–six tips to help you select (or solicit) the best quotes from your customers, and six more to help you turn those quotes into power-packed sales copy in your customer’s voice. Include a valid email address along with your headline and defense, and I will send you the tip sheet within 48 hours of approving your comment (see top of post for a big update–I’ve added a “money” prize!). This offer expires at midnight on Sunday, May 17 2009.