| Want a little secret to
turn your advertising into an irresistible
magnet for customers? Dale Carnegie knew the
secret, and that’s one reason his
book, How to Win Friends and Influence
People, has sold more than 15 million
copies. In fact, British Airways recently
named it, “The Business Book of the
20th Century.”
It’s a great book.
But if Dale had titled it “How to
Remember People’s Names and Curb
Your Incessant Urge to Argue,” do
you think it would have sold as well?
Probably not. There’s great power in
good titles.
What you may not realize
is the words “How to Win Friends and
Influence People” are not only the title
of the book. Those words were also the headline
of a mail-order ad, which sold the book.
The ad ran successfully for many years
and sold hundreds of thousands of
copies.
So what does this have to
do with turning your advertising into an
irresistible customer magnet?
Here’s what. Behind
the title and headline is a “secret
code” that makes it powerful.
Dale knew it. Great advertising
copywriters know it. And now, you’re
going to know it, too.
The “secret
code” is actually a generic
formula that gets attention and
creates desire in your prospect’s
mind. Every winning headline has a unique
generic formula hidden inside.
Here’s the formula in Dale
Carnegie’s book title and headline:
How to _____ and _____.
Let’s see the formula
at work. Say you are an executive
recruiter, and you help companies find
new executives. In reality, your biggest
problem is finding the executive
candidates in the first place. So, to
increase your group of candidates, you
decide to run an ad in your local
business journal. Here’s how you
could use this formula to write a
headline for your ad:
How to
Get a Better Job and Make More Money
…and right after
reading that headline, anyone who’s
even a little interested would want to
read your ad immediately. Then, if your
copy (text) is even halfway decent,
you’d get plenty of calls.
Or, let’s say you run
a martial arts school. Here’s how
you could apply the formula in an
advertising headline to get you new
students:
How to
Stay Fit and Protect Yourself
Do you see how powerful
that is? You’ve just zeroed-in on
people who are likely to be interested in
learning martial arts.
The brutal reality
of advertising: An ad with a good
headline and even mediocre copy
will get you a response and generate
sales. But with a poor headline, even the
most brilliant copy will get you little
or no response. Why? Because without a
good headline to get their attention,
most people won’t read any further.
The good news is, once you
have identified a good headline that
works in one industry or market, you can
adapt it (like we did with the Dale
Carnegie headline, above) for your own
business. Great headlines work as subject
lines in emails, titles on Web pages, and
of course as headlines in print ads and
sales letters. Great headlines will
literally transform your sales.
How does this work in
today’s economy?
Recently a client asked me
to help him introduce a new service to
Internet Service Providers. (Note: To
understand what you are about to read,
you should know that ISPs call their
suppliers “backbone
providers.”) I wrote a direct mail
letter and my client sent it out to ISPs.
Because my client was revealing new
information his prospects hadn’t
heard before, we used the following
“teaser headline” on the front
of the envelope:
What
Your Backbone Provider Isn’t Telling
You
Was this an entirely
original headline? No. I had seen a
similar “teaser headline” on a
successful mailing to promote an
investment newsletter:
What
Your Broker Isn’t Telling You About
High-Tech Stocks
So I merely identified the
“secret code” in the original
winning headline, and applied it to my
client’s market, ISPs.
The response to the
mailing was overwhelming! Nearly
10% of the entire ISP industry responded
to our letter – and my client has
added eight figures of new annual
revenues as a result of the business that
developed.
I’m telling you this
not to brag, but to point out the awesome
power of good headlines. While many
people spend hours and hours trying to
come up with “the perfect
headline” for their ads, there is an
easier way. Find proven headlines that
already work for another business in
another industry, and adapt them to your
business.
Then
prepare for a flood of new customers!
David
Garfinkel has been described as
“the world’s greatest
copywriting coach.” He’s a
successful results-oriented copywriter
and the author of “Advertising
Headlines That Make You Rich,”
which shows you how proven
money-making headlines customized for
your business can increase your
profits by 1700%.
http://www.AdvertisingHeadlinesThatMakeYouRich.com/g.o/javaqueen
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