The headline is far and away the most important element of your copy. It’s also the most abused and misunderstood.

This applies whether you’re writing an advertisement, a sales letter, a newsletter, an email, a landing page for a website or any other piece of sales orientated writing.

Why is the headline so important?

Begin at the beginning. Every day we’re inundated with messages that are hell-bent on selling us something. From the moment we turn on the radio or TV or open a newspaper in the morning; when we’re travelling to work by car, train, bus, taxi or tube; when we go online; when we sit down in front of our televisions at night to relax.

A relentless succession of advertisements, each yelling to be noticed. How do we live with it? Easy, we filter them out. Or at least we filter out all but the tiny proportion of ads that grab our ATTENTION.  

Why does one ad grab our attention over another? In almost every case, it’s a powerful headline. Or a powerful visual accompanied by a powerful headline.

What makes for a powerful headline?

There’s more to crafting a powerful headline than getting attention for attention’s sake. Your headline must also be relevant. The job of the headline is to draw the reader into the body copy of your ad, or letter, website, press release, direct mail package, etc. To achieve this it must reflect the primary benefit of your product. It must also actively sell your product.

In his book, Confessions of an Advertising Man, copywriter David Ogilvy claims that, on average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy: “When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. If you haven’t done some selling in your headline, you have wasted 80 percent of your client’s money.” 

You’re probably thinking: “But what about all those quirky and wacky headlines I see around me every day? Are they actively selling me a product?”

The answer is yes – but only in an indirect way. Because in most cases what you’re looking at is brand advertising. The purpose of brand advertising is to keep a brand at the forefront of the public consciousness. It works for global conglomerates, but it has no place in the advertising efforts of a typical business.

Our only concern as copywriters is to generate a direct response.  In the process we may well enhance awareness of our brand, but that is not our primary concern.   

You aren’t trying to win prizes for originality. You’re focused exclusively on one thing: selling your product. So your headline must actively sell to your audience.

Unlike brand advertising, it isn’t good enough simply to get noticed and sub-consciously absorbed for later reference.

At the extreme level, this will involve encapsulating your selling proposition in the most direct way possible by delivering your headline as a self-contained message:  

Here’s a direct headline I produced for an online interview coaching site:   

Using InterviewGOLD™ is like having your very own interview coach available 24 hours a day.

Whether or not you went on to read the body copy of the page, you would understand the message.   

The late, great copywriter John Caples discovered, by means of painstaking split-testing, that the most effective headlines always appeal to the self-interest of the reader.

Whenever you craft a headline ask yourself the question: “Will this headline appeal to the self-interest of my target group?” If it doesn’t, keep redrafting until it does.

More on headlines next time.

A hefty proportion of all sales copy is feature driven. That’s why it doesn’t work especially well:

“The BGZ 640 clothes dryer has a 7.5 kg capacity, a built in condenser and an alternating tumble function…”

So what?   

“The BGZ 640 clothes dryer has a massive 7.5 kg capacity, enabling you to dry 50% more clothes in a single load. The 640’s built in condenser means there’s no need for an inconvenient ventilation hose, and its alternating tumble function means your laundry will be crease-free…”

 Ah, now I see…

The second version of the copy translates feature into benefits. Why? Because benefits sell. As with the headline, self-interest is the driving force:

People don’t buy a faster drill, they buy a quicker hole.

People don’t buy a titanium tennis racquet, they buy a superior volley and serve.

People don’t buy a 1gb memory card for their digital camera, they buy the capacity to take and store 1,000 pictures. 

You get the idea…

During my years as a marketing consultant I’ve spent a lot of time involved in training people in the art of selling. In my experience, the main quality that distinguishes a successful sales person is the ability to translate features into benefits, and to do so in a believable and engaging way.

Instead of stating simply and clearly the benefits of what she’s selling, the inexperienced sales person will frequently become bogged in a mire of facts, figures, statistics and irrelevancies.

But there’s no point in telling someone, for example, that the car you’re selling has a hybrid engine if it doesn’t mean a thing to them. And it certainly doesn’t pay to presume that just because you happen to know that a hybrid engine emits less CO2 and gives more miles to the gallon that your prospect will be equally well informed. 

And even if your prospect does get the drift of what this barrage of features implies for them, it will have nothing like the same persuasive impact as being immersed in the benefits firsthand.  

As with the ace sales person, the ace copywriter will paint a picture for their prospect, they’ll transport them in their imagination to a place where they can actually envisage themselves as the owner of this indispensible product. They’ll create a sense of urgency and desire; they’ll make them wonder how on earth they ever got by without the product. And they do this by driving home the benefits.

when features become benefits – a note of caution…

Once you’ve got to know the rules, only then can you break them. And so it is with extolling benefits. Because there is a certain type of prospect who is going to be immediately turned off by being hit over the head with a list of benefits. For want of a better term, I’ll call this person the ‘industry insider’. This is the targeted business-to-business prospect, usually a specialist in his field, and who is able to read between the lines with having it spelt out. 

If, for example, you’re writing a sales letter addressed to, say, mining engineers, and you’re attempting to sell them a new type of pump that outperforms other models on the market. You’re going to consider very carefully how you present the benefits.

The wrong way:

“The Acme Super-Fast 490z pumps at speeds of up to 5,000 litres a minute, which means and end to waiting as your mine shaft slowly drains of water while you lose valuable productivity. The Acme 490z pump will drain your mineshaft in hours – not days!”

OK, I exaggerate for effect, but you see where I’m going.    

In most cases this type of prospect is ‘feature orientated’, meaning they understand the jargon of their business better than you do, and they certainly don’t need to be told that your 5,000 litre a minute pump is going to drain their mine shaft faster than their 2,000 litre model, and that it’s going to have an impact on their productivity.  They’re perfectly able to work it out for themselves, and must be allowed to do so.

Here’s an extract from a brochure I wrote for a firm of City of London asset managers:

The XYZ Asset Management team enjoys complete investment autonomy, empowering it to achieve optimal medium and long-term returns, with the emphasis on flexible and transparent long only equity solutions based on client specific benchmarks…

To the average reader this is gobbledegook.  But my target prospect knows exactly how these features translate in terms of benefits without having them spelt out. Any attempt to clarify the benefits would be construed as patronising, and the brochure would almost certainly end up in the bin. Instead I’ve flattered my reader by crediting her with the intelligence to work it out for herself. As a result I’m immediately on her wavelength.

If selling the identical product to the general public, (business to consumer) I would, of course, come from an entirely different premise, and I certainly would never, ever use jargon (as well as acronyms: RNID, DTI, etc) without first defining the meaning. 

As a general rule of thumb, when writing for niche business-to-business markets, the more specialised your prospect the more feature orientated they will be, and the more resistant they will be to benefits-orientated selling.

I labour this point because in my early days as a copywriter I fell into this very trap. I wrote a benefit-laden, all bells and whistles, razzmatazz, in your face sales brochure for a (especially staid) machine manufacturer. It was thrown back at me to be rewritten!  I’ve never made the same mistake again.

What’s your USP? Give it some serious thought, write it down, frame it and then hang it on the wall.

Rule # 1 Get attention!

OK, let’s consider what this means in practice. How do you go about getting attention? Well it’s easy. All you need to do is be bolder, brasher, louder and more persistent than the competition! It works. It’s what every two-year old child does when it wants attention. In a cinema or a restaurant, wherever, all they have to do is jump and scream and they get all the attention they could ever need – wholesale. But there’s a problem. It’s the wrong kind of attention. Why? Because it’s unfocussed. It irritates everybody and profits nobody.

Unfortunately the fractious two-year old has yet to learn the subtle art of selecting his audience, ie his parents. (Who else is going to care?) He instead employs a scattergun approach, squandering his resources on attracting the unwarranted attention of the entire room, which by an uncanny coincidence is exactly what the majority of businesses do with their fragile marketing budgets. 

So before we begin let’s make one thing clear: getting attention has nothing to do with jumping up and down and making the loudest noise. Getting attention has everything to do with selecting the right audience at the right time and in the right place and delivering the right message. Or as master copywriter Gary Halbert once put it: “Find a hungry crowd and give them what they want.” 

Let’s look at how it’s done.                

1.1/ locate your ‘USP’

Before you so much as write a word, it is CRITICAL that you consider your USP.

What is a USP?

Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is your major benefit encapsulated. It’s what differentiates you from the competition.  It’s what you stand for in the eyes of your customers. If you don’t know what it is, then you can bet your life nobody else will. Please understand that your USP doesn’t have to be original (unless it is). What matters is that you clearly and concisely define your product to best match your prospects’ needs and differentiate positively yourself from your competitors.   

Your USP can be articulated in a strap line or slogan.

Here’s the strap line I use for my copywriting agency. It’s served me well:

Hard-hitting, provocative writing that will sell your product service or idea

How do you formulate a good USP? 

If you have a wildly original product, then it shouldn’t be rocket science.  I recently dined at a restaurant in London whose USP was that its customers eat in complete darkness, served exclusively by blind waiters!

Dans le Noir ?

A truly sensory culinary experience

Dans le Noir ? is a restaurant offering the visitor a dining experience in complete darkness.

Says it all!

As the world of business is in a state of constant flux, however, a USP will sometimes need to change to adapt to new circumstances. 

Dans le Noir? has been very successful, not least because of the predictable mountain of free publicity it’s received in the media (read more about free PR in ‘FREE Media Publicity’ section of Business Marketing Goldmine). For this reason it’s unlikely to be long before competition emerges. When this happens, Dan le Noir?     

simply needs to change its USP to include the words ‘London’s original…’, or ‘London’s first and finest…’. When hit hard by the competition, Smith’s Crisps strap line became ‘The original and the Best.’ You get the idea.   

Well, you’re thinking, it’s all very well for them, but my business has nothing original to differentiate it. When this happens, you need to think laterally. The first thing you do is check out the competition.  Look online, in the press, Yellow Pages, trade journals, etc, and find out what your competitors are saying about themselves.

But even more importantly, find out what they’re NOT saying about themselves!

Is there a benefit they’re neglecting to exploit that you could claim as your own USP? Because a USP doesn’t have to be original or exclusive – it just has to be claimed as your own. 

Let’s say you’re in the car insurance business.  And let’s say your policies include 90 days annual European driving cover at no additional cost.  And let’s say your competitors’ policies also include this benefit, BUT they make no mention of it in their marketing. Claim it as your own!

I changed my motor insurance recently for this exact reason. Last summer when I drove my car in Europe I discovered that my standard insurance policy didn’t cover me.  I had to take out a separate (and expensive) short-term policy to cover me for just two weeks.

Then I received a direct mail shot from another insurer – a MAJOR UK insurer and motoring association  - offering me “90 days FREE European cover” included with my standard policy”.  I switched insurers like a shot. 

It was only after I’d made the decision to switch that I discovered, upon researching the market more thoroughly, that most of this MAJOR insurer’s competitors were also offering the same or a similar benefit – it’s just that it only ever featured in the small print. I had to search for it. They clearly didn’t consider it to be a significant benefit. Lesson learned. 

Another type of USP is the ‘bold guarantee’.

In its early days Domino’s Pizzas struggled for business. Not surprising when you consider the competition – even back in 1960, when Tom Monaghan opened his first pizzeria with a down payment of $75 and a $500 loan. How do you find a USP for something as commonplace as a pizza? Then Tom (or, more likely, a copywriter working for Tom) had an inspired idea – his, now famous, 30 minute guarantee: “Hot, fresh pizza in 30 minutes or your money back”.

The rest is history. There are now 8,000 Domino’s outlets across the globe.        

Your USP can be based on anything…

…size:

High and Mighty for Big and Tall Men

…location:

The last filling station for 60 miles! Fill up now!

Starfleet Services in ½ mile

… low price:

ASDA

Permanently low prices

…high price:

Stella Artois

Reassuringly expensive

…exclusivity:

Liberty

Liberty doesn’t need to flesh out its USP with a promise or slogan. It’s already there in the name. Understatement speaks volumes to the right kind of prospect. Think Bentley, Hermes, Gucci, Rolex…   

Your USP should permeate your selling literature; not simply as a slogan, but as an embedded message presented from any and every angle.   

NEXT WEEK: BENEFITS VS FEATURES 

Introduction

Master the rare and profitable art of persuading others to do your bidding by means of the written word.

Good copywriting is the lifeblood of effective marketing. Whatever your line of business, the ability to write effective

sales copy is the wealth generating equivalent of having a shed-load of golden geese laying golden eggs right there in your back yard.

What is copywriting?

Copywriting is salesmanship in print: sales letters, ads, websites, brochures, e-marketing, blogs, newsletters, branding, PR, proposals, presentations,

marketing collateral… all depend on compelling copy if they’re to sell your product.

If you’re relying on weak or amateurish copy to sell your product, then you’re seriously undermining your profitability.

And the most depressing thing is that most business owners fail completely to grasp this simple fact.

Learn how to write great copy (or employ a damn good copywriter to do it for you), and you’ll place yourself head and shoulders

above the competition – guaranteed.     

What makes for great copy? 

Give one hundred copywriters an identical assignment, and you’ll end up with the identical number of interpretations.

That said, if they’re professionals they’ll all adhere more or less to a number of hard and fast rules.

Within the parameters of these rules, however, there’s no right or wrong way to write great copy.

Ultimately, the only true measure of success is RESULTS.   

Good copywriting has everything in common with good journalism: the compelling headline, the teasing sub-head, the hook,

an appeal to curiosity and the emotions, self-interest, a desire to read through to the end to see what happens. 

I labour this point because there is a tendency among some copywriting ‘experts’ to suggest that effective copywriting depends on learning

a repertoire of tricks, short cuts and closely guarded secret formulae that, once mastered, will somehow work a curious magic upon the reader

and compel her to part with her money.

This is piffle. Good copy – copy that sells – is about being able to produce a structured and compelling argument that will capture a reader’s Attention

and appeal to their Interest while enhancing their Desire and satisfying their doubts to a point where they take ACTION, and being able to do so convincingly

and in a way that stands out from the crowd. There are no quick fixes.

ü  Attention 

ü  Interest

ü  Desire

ü  Action

The classic ‘AIDA’ formula, as used by successful copywriters the world over since time in memoriam in the noble cause of wealth creation.

You may well have come across it – or one of many variations - before. But awareness of the AIDA formula is but a first small step on the journey.

Grasping the concept is what matters. This blog series will arm you with the facts – without the hype and mumbo-jumbo.  

And a note of caution: it’s true there are techniques and strategies employed by copywriters that do not feature in journalism

(as we’ll discover), but if your writing is any way dull, pedestrian, clunky, unstructured, rambling or incoherent or, heaven forbid,

peppered with spelling mistakes and grammatical bloomers, all the clever tricks in the world aren’t going to save you. Enough said. 

This blog series comprises a list of do’s and don’ts for the aspiring copywriter. Stick with them and you’ll prosper.

NEXT WEEK: rule #1 Get Attention!

Sir Barnett Cocks

While they may have an online presence, they do little to enhance their branding through incoming channels.  Many have never conducted an online campaign, and few attach much significance to their online rankings and flow of site traffic.  The prevailing attitude is ‘business as usual’ – i.e. reliance on the traditional channels of tradeshows, direct response, email marketing and cold calling.

But while these methods remain effective in the short term, they are, like the dinosaurs before them, locked into a slow and irreversible demise.  The evidence is all around us. Just take a look at the prevalence of new tools for blocking interruptive marketing, including sophisticated spam filters, and caller ID.  And, even more worryingly, laws such as the CAN Spam Act and Do Not Call lists mean that even if marketers find a way of getting past the gate keepers, they’ll find it much harder to circumvent the law.

The fact is the way people research new products is changing forever right beneath our noses.  Smart businesses realise this, and are slowly shifting the emphasis of their efforts from  ‘outbound’  marketing – i.e. broadcasting your message to thousands of people in the knowledge that between only  1% and 7% have any interest whatsoever  - to ‘inbound’ marketing  - by which people seek you out when they’re ready to buy something.  This means making the move away from conventional old-school marketing and investing more in search engine optimisation, pay-per-click, business blogging and social media marketing.  It means you’ll be found by more qualified prospects and convert more of them to paying customers, and you’ll stop wasting money on costly, hit-and miss interruption marketing methods.

A good place to begin is by analysing your business’s internet marketing effectiveness. Currently, how often do you to get ‘found’ by prospects in search engines, blogs and social media? To get the relevant data for your company, do some keyword research using Overture Keyword Tool, search on Technorati for blogs in your industry; search on social media sites relevant to your industry (Facebook, LinkedIn and others).

Use the data from the report to see how you can build more opportunities to reach prospects who are searching for your products and services.  Finally, develop a plan for transforming your company’s marketing strategy from inbound marketing to outbound marketing, and bring it screaming and kicking into the 21st century!

It’s been almost 100 years since Lord Leverhulme made his famous pronouncement, and its logic has remained unchallenged. Until now…

For most small businesses, marketing amounts to one thing: placing advertisements in trade journals, the local and national press and Yellow Pages, billboards, etc.

Yet during the course of my copywriting work, I rarely encounter a small business owner who is able to quantify with any accuracy the return on their advertising. They vaguely intuit that if they didn’t advertise alongside their competitors, they would get left out of the race – which may or may not be true.

If I question the logic behind this strategy, the usual response is along the lines of, “Well I’ve got to get the message out there and build the company’s profile”. Now on one level this is correct, but by and large it only applies to the few: large corporations with a business to consumer client base, where brand awareness is a vital element of maintaining market share.

Brand advertisements are conceived at huge expense by big city ad agencies, and yet nobody knows for certain the effectiveness of a particular ad. OK, the marketing departments’ stats people have clever ways of quantifying market trends as they pan out during a particular campaign, but no one can tell for certain whether X, Y or Z customer bought a new pair of Nikes as a result of the latest ultra-cool ad campaign, or whether they’d have bought them regardless.

One thing the big global brands can be certain of, however, is that if they fail to keep their name creatively at the forefront of the public consciousness their market share will suffer.

But while this may be true for the likes of Nike, Coca Cola and L’Oreal, there is no mileage in small businesses squandering their fragile marketing budgets by following the lead of the big B2C brands.

Confusing brand advertising with direct response advertising is one of the main reasons why so many smaller businesses waste their fragile marketing budgets.

Direct response is the only cost-effective method of marketing a small business. If you aren’t already doing so, consider putting in place a revised marketing strategy that incorporates the following:

Scale back reliance on conventional advertising, unless you are able to demonstrate that it brings in a measurable ROI. Instead, concentrate your resources on low-cost, quantifiable direct response strategies, such as pay-per-click, telemarketing, email marketing, newsletter and article marketing, search engine marketing and direct mail. The idea is to arrive at a balanced mix of outbound and inbound marketing that supplies your sales funnel with a steady stream of prequalified leads.