Headline Secrets: How to promise a benefit and still use fear of loss

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Hello again!

Before I expose some great headline secrets, I think it would be smart to explain how important headlines are.

But first, what is a headline?

Of course, for an advertisment, the headline is the “ad for the ad” — but think about it this way… the headline is simply the first thing your reader sees or listener hears.

The Godfathers of direct response marketing and other masters of the trade have found headlines can increase the response to an ad by…

1,800%

And you can confirm that with Ted Nicholas, Jay Abraham, Dan Kennedy, and way more.

Listen to what these Greats had to say about headlines…

“…if you use a poor headline, it doesn’t matter how hard you labor over your copy because your copy will not be read… If you have time to write as many as twenty five headlines, you increase still further your chances of writing a good one.”

– John Caples, Tested Advertising Methods

“The writer of this chapter spends far more time on headlines than on writing.  He often spends hours on a single headline… It is not uncommon for a change in headlines to multiply returns from five to ten times over.”

– Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising

“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.”

– David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising

“I, myself, have re-headlined ads and increased their pull by 475%.  I have a client who pays me $195,000 per year to write headlines.  Headlines are where I spend more creative effort than any other aspect of my work.”

– Gary C. Halbert, The Gary Halbert Letter

Is that enough convincing?  You say it is?  Good…

Then let’s proceed…

Now you may be thinking, “Well that’s all well and good Justin, but what is a good headline?”

According to John Caples, the best headlines have at least one of the four following elements:

1) Self-interest

2) News

3) Curiosity

4) Quick and Easy Way

And keep in mind, your headline can have MORE than one of these (which I prefer).  You can have a newsy headline that promises a benefit and still creates curiosity.

Most copywriters use benefits that promise gain of some sort… but there’s another psychological undercurrent in the mind twice as powerful as the pleasure of gain.  It’s…

Loss Aversion!

While in my finance classes in university, one of my favorite professors and investors taught me this:  An investor (human) would rather not lose $1 than gain $2.

Think about those people who buy stocks and then the price goes down.  In spite of common sense, they usually do not sell because now they have lost money.  Hope becomes their strategy.  “It will go back up” they reassure themselves.  You see… the fact is they haven’t truly lost until they sell — so if they sell, then they have to accept they have lost.  I wonder how many BILLIONS of dollars have been given to the marketplace because of this aspect of human nature.

We hate to lose.

Let’s talk about how we’re going to leverage loss aversion to our benefit.

Here’s a way to use loss aversion in a positive way: When an aspiring comic asked Jerry Seinfeld how he kept up the motivation to write every single day…

“He told  me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day.

“After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.

“Don’t break the chain,” he said again for emphasis.”

That’s a great tip isn’t it?  I thought you’d like it.

So now I want to give you headline ideas that both promise a benefit to the reader AND create a sense of loss aversion.  A sense of “I’m going to lose out on something, some piece of information, some tip or trick, if I don’t read this.”

The first is…

A Case Against BLANK

You would insert something your prospect is currently doing or wants to do.

As an example, if you were a real estate agent in Charotte, NC you could run an ad in the newspaper that read…

The Case Against Buying A Home In Charlotte In 2011

I assure you, you would arrest the attention of any and every person scanning that newspaper who was thinking about buying a home.  Now… how do you pay off a headline like that?  It’s simple.  You could say crime is going up in the city and many agents were not reporting this information to potential buyers.  So if the reader wants to make sure they get a home in a safe neighborhood where they don’t have to worry about a crackhead breaking in and holding them at knife-point for twenty bucks to buy a crack rock, they better give you a call.

Or you could say the government was giving away tax write-offs to home buyers to stimulate the economy.  But most agents have no idea about the program… and even if they did… they wouldn’t tell you because it’s more work and less money for them.  However, you’ve written a special report that reveals exactly how to get this free money and all they have to do to get a copy mailed to them for free, is give you a call.

Here’s another…

Lies BLANK Tell

Imagine it were summertime.  It’s blistering hot outside — almost 100 degrees.  For some strange reason, your home starts getting warmer than usual even though your air conditioner is on full blast.  You walk to the vent to investigate and meet a wall of ice.  Your AC is frozen and you have no idea how to fix it.  The whole contraption is as foreign to you as rocket science (and fixing it might as well be).  So you open up the Yellow Pages, flip to Heating & Air, and among the normal ads you see…

Lies Heating & Air Companies Tell Unsuspecting Customers

Now, look me in the eyes, and tell me you wouldn’t read that first.  And remember, this is all we can ask of the headline; it almost forces the reader to read the next line.

Here’s another…

The Great BLANK Hoax

With this headline, what really matters is WHO is saying it.

As an example, pretend you are an investor (beginner or advanced).  But let’s imagine you put a small portion of your income into the stock market every week and then one day you sit down and open up your newspaper and see a big picture of Warren Buffet saying…

“The Great Wall Street Hoax”

or

“The Great Stock Market Hoax of 2011″

Or let’s say you own a tanning salon.  You could put an ad in the newspaper that reads…

The Great Tanning Bed Hoax

And you could go on to say most tanning beds in the city use cheap bulbs that burn you more than tan you.  But you use these special bulbs that give you a beautiful brown tan, instead of the ugly orange tan the inferior bulbs give you.

And last but not least, I want to include an adaptation of a Eugene Schwartz headline…

Revealed at last!  The Fat Melting Program That

Overcomes The Body Chemical That Keeps You Fat!

Hold the phone! You mean to tell me it’s an esoteric chemical in my body keeping me fat?  And not the McDonald’s I shove down my throat everyday?  It’s not the ice cream and never ending smoothies?  I knew it!  I can make time to read this…

Well my friend… it’s getting late.

I hope you enjoyed that lesson and do me a favor:  Never forget the importance of headlines.  They truly make or break you.

Few stop to think about it, but if your ad does not get read, you are not selling a damn thing.  Not a penny’s worth.

Take care until next time.

I’m out…

– J. Quick