In the first 8 chapters, I tried to build a foundation and now we'll go into specifics and a lot of additional things you can use.
KCSecret #22: Headlines are more important than anything
I said that in big bold headline-type because it's a headline about headlines and headlines are more important than anything.
We talked about the fact that headlines must stop your prospect cold. If you don't stop your prospects cold, if you don't whack them in the head, stop them from page turning or web or channel surfing, you will lose them and then they will never see your ad.
There are a lot of things to know about headlines. That's why Jeff and I included an entirely separate book about them in your bonsuses. But in general, the headline is the most important part of your website, ad, letter or whatever you are doing.
All the statistics people say that a headline is 70% or 80% or whatever, as far as I'm concerned, it's 100% of the ad because if they don't stop because of your headline, the rest of your copy makes zero difference. That's how I look at it.
100% of the effectiveness of whatever you're doing will directly relate to the effectiveness of the headline, at least initially.
If your body copy sucks, you'll lose them at that point. If you don't have a good headline you won't get anywhere with them.
KC Secret #23: The headline is the ad for your ad
If you think about it, it is.
When any of you read a publication in print, and the same is true for the Internet, TV, radio, although they're not really called headlines in TV or radio, it's just what they happen to be saying on TV or Radio.
You might remember "Help I've fallen and can't get up" or other things along those lines on TV. That's basically a headline type thing.
The ad for your ad concept is you've got to get somebody to stop and then want to read the ad. So really it's an ad for your ad.
Headlines will make or break the success of your copy. I spend probably as much time on a two sentence or one sentence headline when I write something new, as I might spend on a whole ad itself. If I'm doing a full-page ad, in fact, sometimes I spend far greater time on a headline than I do on the body copy. In fact, sometimes I re-use body copy and don't change the body copy at all.
I've had or seen 40%, 50% difference in response to ads just from changing the headline and not one thing else.
I've seen a jump from 100 leads to 250-300 leads from an ad that just had a different headline.
And if your conversion rate is pretty constant, an extra 150 leads might make an extra 15 sales and at $500 bucks a pop, that's nice extra money for adding three words to your headline or something.
We had an experience with the "How To Make Money In Your Underwear" headline just to give you another story. One of the airline magazines wouldn't let us run the headline with "How To Make $4,000 A Day Sitting At Home At Your Kitchen Table In Your Underwear." The
editor of the magazine finally told me that it was "In Your Underwear"
that was the problem. So we took out the "In Your Underwear" and the ad bombed. This is a headline and ad that has worked pretty much everywhere we've run it, not always, but pretty much everywhere. We had a major bomb and airline magazines aren't cheap even the way we buy space.
So changing just three words in my headline, did it make a difference? Yes, it made a big difference because maybe the "in your underwear" thing is just catchy enough or whatever that it gets people curious because they really have never seen that.
I imagine at one time most of you hadn't seen headlines that talk about how to make money sitting at home in your underwear.
Although now we see a lot of sitting at home in your underwear and sitting at home in your pajamas and sitting at home in your robe, and we see other variations on the theme at this point. Sitting at home naked, that would be in other types of magazines that we don't really get involved with. But yes, that would be another variation on that theme.
We keep track of every headline we use for every ad. They are all coded in every business, and we always have several businesses going, but we keep track of all of that and we have exact tracking of the headline, the number of leads or sales, depending on what we're going for, usually leads in most cases.
I cannot stress the importance of headlines enough. In fact, if you only have a little bit of money and you can only afford a little ad, make 90% of the ad headline and then just put "FREE report reveals...enter your email address or call for your free recorded message" or whatever.
On the next page find out what every piece of copy you create must have.
KC Secret #24: Everything Must Have A Headline
A huge percentage of the things we see don't even have a headline.
If you remember the site you bought this book from, it had a headline, our emails have headlines, all of the samples in this book have headlines. Everything has to have a headline.
Do I mean every paragraph must have a headline? No.
Every piece you use. If it's a website, it has to have a headline. If it's a business card, if you use business cards, they should have a headline. If it's an ad, it obviously has to have a headline. A sales letter, definitely. We'll see some ads that don't have headlines in a minute.
Now, some headlines might seem really small to you. Those are sometimes called subheads.
One headline "Are you frustrated with the money you've been making?" has worked for me for years.
Another one an associate used to use is "How to put an end to prospecting while you earn a six-figure income with this amazing new profit center."
If the pieces for these two items didn't have a headline, most people probably wouldn't read them.
Want to know how to cheaply and quickly get a continuous supply of headline and copy tips?...
KC Secret #25: An Easy Continuous Education Can Be Obtained from Tabloids and Magazines
How many of you subscribe to things like the Globe or Enquirer?
Come on, don't be shy, how many?
Now, I know a lot more of you get these than will admit it.
It doesn't come in a plain brown wrapper. Your mailman or mail person will know that you read the Enquirer or the Star.
I'm here to tell you that if you want to get a continuous education in headline study, read all of those publications.
I want to show you this Redbook one here (click here).
Now, magazine headlines, the good magazines, the ones that sell a lot of copies, like when you are checking out at the grocery store, there are a sea of publications there, those magazines...they have great headlines.
If you are at a magazine rack, there are a sea of publications there too. They have to stand out.
On this current ad, they've put of course, Julia Roberts' face. Look at the headlines...
• "Swimsuits that firm and flatter you"
• "Better sex in seven days - the new technique everyone's talking about."
• "Is stress spoiling your happy moments?"
• "Hips, thighs, butt - six ways to tighten up."
• "Danger at the drugstore - what you should never buy.
• "How Olympic dreams killed her little girl."
"The new technique everyone's talking about", psychologically, since you of course are the only person that doesn't know what this technique is because everyone else knows because they just said everyone's talking about it, you're compelled to flip through the magazine and find those pages and read that article.
"Is stress spoiling your happy moments?" This magazine is obviously targeted at women. "Hips, thighs, butt - six ways to tighten up." There isn't much more you can say. It's not a long headline, but it gets right to the point. It's clear.
By the way a number of whatever you're talking about in your headline is usually better than saying for intance, "Ways to tighten up", it's not as effective as "Six fast ways to tighten up" or eleven or three or 101 or whatever you have. Using a number for your
"number" of things is good because it implies psychologically there are a number of things I can learn and maybe one of them will get this damn cellulite off my butt or whatever it is the woman is worried about.
"Danger at the drugstore - what you should never buy."
Whose going to go to the drugstore now without wanting to know what you should never buy.
"How Olympic dreams killed her little girl." or "Quiz - are you too easy on your kids?" We all know the answer to that quiz.
"Julia Roberts - No she's not fickle, here's the real reason she couldn't save her marriage."
Any one or all of these headlines, and they put a lot of headlines on here, and this is just one magazine out of hundreds that you can pick up and it's better than any 4-year education that you'll ever get at any college, just by reading one cover of this magazine. You could take 4 years of advertising at college and you would not learn as much as you would learn from this cover right here.
Cosmo is another beautiful example. Reader's Digest, it's not just the sleazy ones.
Most women's magazines these days you'll notice some patterns.
There is always a sex article in every single women's magazine and they almost always put it in the upper left hand corner on the front of the cover.
If you see New Woman it will say "What does he really want in bed?" I'm just making that up, but I'm sure they've had that headline. They usually put that up there and once again, this is catering to a female audience most likely, but "Swimsuits that firm and flatter you" for example, again, the compelling curiosity, the interest there that stops you cold. A lot of people by the way buy Redbook. I don't know how long it's been in business, but I guess it's been in business for a long, long, long time.
They are not in business because of the articles, they are in business because of these headlines. That's why they are in business.
Dan Kennedy tells a story about how Cosmopolitan was failing until they switched their covers to these types of headlines.
If you want to see some good examples of what not to do, keep reading...
Here are some examples of ads that don't have effective (if any) headlines.
You can't see some of them very good, but pick up any magazine and you'll find these types of ads.
These were just from a magazine in my office that I just grabbed and went through and picked out four or five because there are thousands of ads that suck that you can find anywhere.
"Chrysler Cirrus LXI" that's the headline (Click here to see sample ad)
A car. Production costs of an ad like this are probably $40,000 to
$50,000. They have to have the catering for the crew. And then the inquiry device is in little, teeny, tiny print at the very, very, very bottom that nobody ever sees because nobody pays any attention to the ad because nobody is stopping. They're not getting knocked over by a headline.
Here's one for Bose (Click here to see sample ad).
"The first high fidelity system with a Napoleon complex."
Everyone knows when you're reading the paper or a magazine, how do you read it, like this, you're turning the pages and you are scanning for a headline that stops you. That's how you read it. When you're channel surfing you sit and channel surf until something stops you. These things don't stop you.
Here's an IBM ad (Click here to see sample ad).
Now IBM is a multi-billion dollar company. IBM probably spends I'm guessing $300 to $500 million a year in advertising, maybe more.
No headline.
Now if you saw this ad, is this a weightlifting ad? You would probably, as you were going by this in your subconscious mind in the one second or less that you flipped past this ad that they spent probably $40,000 or $50,000 in production and God knows what a full page in U.S. News & World Report costs in four color brightness. In fact, there is no headline on this ad and you would subconsciously maybe think it had something to do with a weight training program or maybe you wouldn't even pay that much attention.
Here's a clever one...
"Life's not always a picnic but it can be a ride in the park."
(Click here to see sample ad).
Now the intention here of course, the car that they are selling is called their Park Avenue. The reason I put this one up here, it sucks and it was a good example of what sucks.
But the other thing is, and this is the cleverness issue, there is somebody who went through some college and had a four year degree in advertising or business and got a job in advertising agency and was given this by the account rep whose job is to take the people that run this department of Buick out to lunch and golf and things and then they hand it over to the younger person. That younger person has to think of something clever then. In today's advertising society, and they had some of this in the old days , but now it's pervasive, cleverness equals quality from the advertisers point of view.
Obviously, "but it can be a ride in the park" is a clever pun on the fact that it's a park Avenue and I'm sure the person probably got promoted to junior executive senior second assistant or something because of this clever ad, however this clever ad doesn't sell anything.
It doesn't stop you and it just keeps you rolling right by.
They've got the call 1-800 number in there, but I remember I talked to somebody once who was going through a magazine that was calling these big companies 800 numbers that they had, and one of them the lady said he was the first person that had called that whole week. He was doing some research to see if people were calling.
Now they spent all this money, they have this person sitting there or they hired an answering service or whatever, and nobody calls. Yet do they discontinue this type of advertising? No they do not discontinue this type of advertising.
They do more.
A question I always had was, "..was there any big companies that do direct response?" I'll show you in a second.
Here we have another wonderful ad. This is a financial product and the headline, which is only kind of a headline but we'll give it the benefit of the doubt.
Templeton Developing Markets Trust (Click here to see sample ad)
It looks like an ad. This is something very important too. The more your ad looks like an ad, the less it will work. This is very, very, very important. Maxwell Sackheim called it "addiness".
KC Secret #26: The More Your Ad Looks Like an Ad, the Less It Will Work
Because subconsciously you are bombarded with advertising messages every day and for most if not all of us, if it looks like an ad, even remotely looks like an ad, that means if you use reverse type instead of just plain black letters on a white background, if you put pictures like in this Templeton ad with the passports and stuff like
that, this is an ad that looks like an ad and will be ignored.
Even if you have some direct response elements to it which they have here, they have a phone number to call and they even have a code, so they are doing some tracking, the fact of the matter is most people will blow by this because there is nothing stopping them.
It could even have a good headline, but it doesn't. But if it did, people would blow by it.
This is very critical.
If you look at the ads, again, I'm not saying I'm the only person that can write, but if you look at what I do, all my stuff, nothing ever remotely looks like an ad. They always look like articles.
At the end of this current example, it says "A member of the $128 billion Franklin Templeton Group." This is very important that they got that on there because like George Costanza on Seinfeld would say,
"Oh, I'm shaking in my boots. because of how great you are and you got $128 billion dollars here that nobody cares about."
So, the question a few minutes ago, do any big companies do direct response advertising, real good direct response advertising? The answer is to my knowledge, NO!
All of them are trying infomercials and they spend $400,000 or
$500,000 and they don't even know if anybody's calling.
In any case, this next one is an old ad. It's an old ad that is famous. I don't know who wrote it. I think it came out of Lasker's office or somewhere.
The next one is a direct response ad for a Cadillac.
"The Penalty of Leadership"
(Click here to see sample ad)
Now, this may not be the best headline in the world, but it worked because the Cadillac sales when this ad ran went up quite a bit even though it's not a true direct response ad, it doesn't ask for action.
I just wanted to show you that at some point in their past history, they understood how to advertise and of course, completely lost it somewhere down the road.
This ad doesn't have any pictures, it doesn't have a bull running through a field of wheat with the sun setting over the horizon with a Scottish castle in the background.
They probably said "This isn't how we do advertising" so they never did it again. This probably worked so good for Cadillac that they stopped doing it and went to the picture ads and the other things that don't work.
And the ad guy was probably fired because this ad doesn't have great pictures. Now they did throw the Cadillac logo in there and they have a little olive branch, I'm not sure exactly what that is, but it's in there. I just wanted to show you that back in those days these were
And the ad guy was probably fired because this ad doesn't have great pictures. Now they did throw the Cadillac logo in there and they have a little olive branch, I'm not sure exactly what that is, but it's in there. I just wanted to show you that back in those days these were