In a recent webinar I talked about how the offer is the most important thing on your sales-lead generating web pages (squeeze pages).

The offer is usually a free gift like a PDF report that your potential customer or client can download once they submit their name or email address.

Coming up with offers is easy when you know how — and I’ve talked a lot about that on my blog in the past. I’ve also spent a lot of time talking about lead page design and development and have launched numerous programmes including squeeze page software and squeeze page video training programmes.

However, what I’ve not talked about much is the actual process of writing the text to go on your lead pages… that can be a tricky one. So at the moment I’m developing a brand new programme (called The Lead Page Copy Formula) which explains a step-by-step process for writing lead pages that convert up to 93% of visitors into active e-mail subscribers.

If you’d like to hear more about that then click here to join the private announcements list.

However in advance of me launching the new programme I wanted to share three ways to create effective headlines for your squeeze pages.

Eye-Catching Headlines Are Critical

Headlines are usually one of the first things a prospect looks at when they land on your lead page – and the strength of the headline determines whether or not the visitor stays on your page long enough to become a sales-lead.

I’ll outline 3 quick and easy techniques you can use to create great attention-grabbing headlines – implement them, and crafting your squeeze pages should become effortless.

1) Simply restate the title of the offer.

For example, if the offer is a free report (PDF) that explains “How to reduce your corporation tax by 20% or more in the next 12 months”, then you could just repeat that title as your headline – “How to reduce your corporation tax by 20% in the next 12 months.”

You can also add a prefix, such as “Revealed:…” then the title, or “Discover:…” then the title. Or, you could add “Free report reveals how to….” then the title.

One headline I’ve had success with on my own squeeze pages – when offering my paperback book – is “Claim your free copy of… ” then the title of the book, “Email Marketing Dynamite”(in quotation marks).

There is, however, a caveat with the above strategy. Even though this worked really well, it did so because the driver of that campaign fully explained what ‘Email Marketing Dynamite’ was.

Now, a ‘driver’ could be a number of things, such as a google advert, an email campaign, a written advertisement, or even an email from a Joint Venture partner. If that driver – the strategy used to get people onto the squeeze page – hadn’t fully explained what ‘Email Marketing Dynamite’ was, then I wouldn’t recommend that headline.

2) Highlight the pain the visitor will suffer if they don’t request the offer.

Let’s use our example of “How to reduce your corporation tax by 20% or more in the next 12 months”. Here, you need to highlight the pain of paying too much corporation tax. For example, “Warning: 7 out of 10 corporations paid too much tax in 2010″.

However, for this type of headline to be effective, you also need to follow up with a solution to the pain. For example, “Revealed…Special report shares…”

In the above example, I’ve spun the headline on its head so that it outlines the pain, then offers a solution in the sub-headline.

3) Use a ‘JV Headline’.

When I do Joint Ventures with other online marketers, and he or she promotes my free report to their list (using a squeeze page that I’ve created), then my headlines nearly always include the name of the Joint Venture partner.

For example, the headline could be, “Joe Bloggs recommends this special report”, or a similar headline that includes the name of the JV partner.

The reason why this is so effective is because the email subscribers on Joe Blogg’s email list trust him — so when they land on your squeeze page, they will be more likely to enter their email address and request the free gift when they see the JV partner’s name in the headline at the top of the page — trust is implied.

Beyond these strategies, there are many more ways to create powerful headlines for your squeeze pages, but I hope these techniques have given you some ideas on how to create great attention-grabbing headlines for your lead pages?

Leave your comments and questions below – what types of headlines do you use on your lead pages?

Warm regards,

Ed Rivis.

P.S. If you’d like to discover lots more ways of crafting effective headlines for your squeeze pages, then click here to register for free announcements about my forthcoming lead page copywriting course — called “The Lead Page Copy Formula”… I’m creating it for anyone who wants to create squeeze pages and lead pages that convert at ‘abnormally’ high levels (as high as 93%!)

A client recently asked me “should my web page have long copy or short copy?” (In other words, she wanted to know whether the descriptions of the products and services on her web page should have lots of writing, or not.)

Now this is a really common question, and the common assumption is that “People don’t read web pages.”.

In fact, a few years ago an American marketer boldly announced he’d “analysed all successful product web pages and discovered the best length for web page copy is equivalent to one and a half pages of A4 text.”

I think such rigid rules are absolutely ridiculous.

The length of copy on a sales web page needs to be “as long as it needs to be” to effectively explain the specific features and benefits — and reasons why — the product (or service) being offered is superior to the alternatives.

The age old marketing maxim is “the more you tell the more you sell”.

If you’ve got a simple product that solves a single problem for a customer, then you obviously won’t need to write as much as you would to explain a complex product that has a myriad of different uses and potential benefits.

For example a bottle opener doesn’t warrant as much copy as an MRI Scanner in order to get the sale.

If in doubt, my advice is to go with long copy, that explains the product or service in detail. As long as it’s not boring, it should generate more sales and enquiries than a web page featuring less explanation and detail.

If you don’t explain the product or service in enough detail then you may not give the reader (web site visitor) enough information to make a buying decision.

An Exception to the Rule

Remember the client I mentioned at the beginning of this article? Well, she was asking whether she needs long or short copy on her lead pages, (the special kind of web pages you use to offer a free report or other incentive in return for a name and email address to build a list of interested prospects.)

With lead pages, all you’re wanting the visitor to do is enter their name and email address in return for an incentive like a free report.

So in this case my answer was that “It depends on where you’re driving traffic (visitors) from.”

If you’re driving traffic from a full page advert or magazine insert, then I use fairly short copy lead pages, because the advert or insert should have already explained the offer in detail… the only reason someone visits the lead page is because they’ve already decided to accept your free offer.

Or, if you’re driving traffic from Google Adwords or anywhere the prospect only sees or reads a small amount of text prior to arriving on the lead page then you’ll probably need a much longer lead page to explain the offer in more detail.

Any time you want to improve the performance of your web pages, ask “who will be looking at this page” (what do they want to know determines what content you put on the page) and “how much do they understand the offer on the page BEFORE they get to it).

The ‘long copy versus short copy’ debate will continue raging probably for as long as companies run advert and promote their wares.

But I can tell you, this simple approach to deciding how much copy to put on your web pages can significantly boost your conversion rates, and the number of enquiries and sales your web pages generate for your business.

Ed.

I interviewed master web copywriter and conversion expert Daniel Levis last Thursday (23rd April 2009). At the end of the interview Daniel made you (my blog reader) a very special offer — access to his full 5R Web Conversion Formula at a preferential rate (i.e. big discount!). To help you decide if this is for you, here’s a quick video review I made over the weekend…

Watch this video to find out why I’m raving about 5R! (CLICK THE GRAPHIC BELOW)

In a nutshell, this is one of the best copywriting programmes I’ve seen, because of the systematic way it goes all the way from from market research through to the end result of highly responsive web copy that packs a powerful emotional punch.

As explained in the video, Daniel’s special offer to my blog readers and email subscribers (which obviously includes you!) is a fantastic $200 discount off the standard price.

==> Click here to get the full 5R Formula shown in my review at $200 discount.

Remember, Daniel’s special offer expires on the 30th April — that’s this coming Thursday!

Act now and take advantage of Daniel’s amazing 365-day guarantee — where he says “if after implementing his system you don’t see an extra $15,000 sales (more than £10,000) as a direct result then you get a full refund.”

How strong a guarantee is that! Who wouldn’t want to try this programme and put Daniel to the test?

I look forward to hearing about the amazing effect this has on your web marketing too. Click here now to go and grab your package too.

To greater web conversion,

Ed.

Most expert copywriters will tell you the headline is one of the most powerful elements on any sales letter or webpages that aspires to sell anything.

Add a compelling, attention grabbing headline to your webpages and you’ll nearly always get more sales.

(The same principle applies to headlines on the front cover of magazines and newspapers — the headlines directly influence sales, and is one of the main reasons why their writers get paid so much.)

Unfortunately a lot of people struggle to write great headlines.

Whenever I write my own copy I sometimes spend ages trying to figure out how to start off a sales letter. But I persist because I know the returns a good headline produces is worth the effort.

And therein lies another problem — when you think you’ve written a great headline… how can you be sure?

The ultimate test is to put the headline on a live webpage and see if sales increase. Unfortunately you may end up testing a dud. It may not increase sales, or worse, even decrease sales.

Obviously that scenario’s best avoided — it’s best to be confident a headline is good before testing it.

So here’s a very powerful tip from master copywriter Clayton Makepeace — and this is a great tip because you can use it to instantly ‘score’ whether their new headline has any chance of selling or not.

It’s this…

(If I recall what I read correctly), Clayton said that a great headline is something your prospects could say at 2 a.m. in the morning.

They’d wake up in a cold sweat, sit bolt upright in bed, slap their forehead and say “If only I could…. ” (fill in the blanks with a problem or challenge).

So here’s an example of this in practice.

Yesterday I critiqued a landing page created by a lady who bought my Landing Page Power home-study programme.

She’s created a great landing page, and been very proactive to actually get traffic (people) on to it. But alas… no sales!

So I took a look, and the moment the page loaded, I could immediately see it it failed Clayton’s “2.a.m. headslap” test.

Here’s the original headline…

“HOW TO QUICKLY BRIDGE THE KNOWLEDGE GAP BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR ACCOUNTANT”

So we played the scenario through.

We asked the question “would anyone wake up at 2 a.m. in the morning, slap their forehead and exclaim “Oh I MUST bridge the knowledge gap between me and my accountant!”

No, of course not.

So we chatted some more, talked about the product she’s created and here’s the first draft version of a possible alternative…

“How to Shave Hundreds of Pounds off Your Accountants Fees & Gain a Critical Insight Into Your Business.”

So running our new headline through the “2 a.m. headslap test” — imagine a cash-strapped business owner who who just received a whacking great big bill from their accountant who they don’t have a great relationship with, and who hasn’t really helped their business in any way.

It’s quite feasible they’d have a ’2 a.m. headslap’ moment, where they’re lying awake in bed thinking “Those [insert expletive] accountants! They’d better reduce their bill or else!”

If they saw our new headline it would be far more likely to capture their attention and interest than the original headline.

SALES-BOOSTING EXERCISE:

Check all your webpages that aren’t selling well (or even at all!).

1) Do they have headlines!? (I’m always amazed at how many don’t!)
2) Secondly, do they pass Clayton’s “2 a.m. headslap test”?

If not…

3) Get the best features of your product or service, translate them into benefits… and then make sure that how you explain those benefits pass Clayton’s powerful test.

Happy headslapping,
Ed.

P.S. Just please don’t phone me at 2 a.m. when you come up with a corker!!

If you’re working vigorously at getting more result from your web marketing, you’ll already know that prolific writing is one of the key elements to success.

• Reports.
• Whitepapers.
• Product descriptions.
• Articles.
• Sales letters.
• Emails.
• News.
• Updates.
• Press releases.
• Etc.

Prolific writing is important for anyone wanting to increase online revenues.

Posting informative content to your site give you another reason to email your list and increase your ‘return visitor’ web statistics.

And it’s well known the quantity of unique content that appears on your site can also increase how much ‘free traffic’ arrives from the search engines.

But of course writing can take up a lot of time, so anything that increases productivity is welcomed with open arms.

Enter the Darkroom.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been using a new text editor called DarkRoom, which has one simple concept — to facilitate productive writing by removing all of the usual clutter on Windows desktops.

DarkRoom is so called because it inverts the writing area — you end up with light text on a black background.

Nothing else remains on the computer desktop. Just you, the keyboard, and a blinking cursor.

And by reducing the screen to little more than a blinking cursor, you feel strangely compelled to type, and I guess therein lies one of the secrets of why it’s so effective — if you’re suffering writer’s block, just start typing (anything) and it soon goes away. Worry about editing later.

How effective is DarkRoom?

Maybe it’s just because it’s still relatively new to me, but since I started using DarkRoom, I can see my writing speed has more than doubled. In fact in less than a week, I may not have written much for my blog, but I’ve just written a small book which I’ll be releasing soon. I know that would have taken me a lot longer without the ‘darkroom effect’.

Did I mention it’s FREE?

I’ll give you the link in a moment, but first a disclaimer…

I don’t know whether your computer is compatible or not. I downloaded and installed Darkroom without any problems, but if after downloading and installing it your computer turns pale and starts smoking, please revert to the DarkRoom web site, not this one. Thanks.

Check it out here ==> http://they.misled.us/dark-room

-Ed.

In my book I explain how content and good sales copy is quite simply one of the most critical elements in any web marketing strategy.

Although I’m ‘not bad’ at copywriting, I certainly don’t consider myself an expert. And this was highlighted — quite painfully — in a recent phone call I had with my friend Paul Gorman, a UK-based copywriting master. (Paul creates multi-million pound sales letters.)

I happened to mention that I thought people would find statistics boring, and didn’t think my forthcoming product on that subject would sell.

Boy… did I get a kicking!!!

Now I’m not into public self-flagellation, but this is about as close as it gets. A few days later we had another chat about it, where Paul explains where I was going wrong… and he recorded the conversation.

As a reader of my blog, you’re going to get the chance to listen to the one to one chat we had, where Paul explains why I got the kicking (the mistake I was making) and also where he reveals what I now realise is the #1 challenge most business owners have with writing good copy.

The audio will be made available Friday afternoon — and it’ll be in a password protected post… if just to limit the amount of people who hear how I got beaten with a big ‘copywriting stick’.

-Ed.

I critiqued a site last week for a sizeable firm of legal professionals (3 separate offices in the Midlands, more than a Million pounds turnover).

Their ‘cleanly designed’ corporate site has only 6 pages in total.

Four of those pages are all “About Us” (i.e. about them), and one page is a Contact form with very little text on it.

Finally, there’s the “Services” page… a rather sad little page that lists their services — about 20 of them — with only a single line per service.

And you can probably guess how many enquiries and how much business their site is currently generating. Virtually zero enquiries leading to no extra clients.

Your prospects are screaming for information.

I’ve spoken a lot about increasing online sales using techniques split-testing, conversion rate analysis, optimising sites and so on.

It’s true, there are tonnes of amazing software applications, tools, gadgets and gizmos that can boost the results you get.

But all of them require one key ingredient, without which they’re all useless. Content.

Compelling content really is king on the Internet, and the moment your web site starts providing more fascinatingly descriptive content, results will almost automatically improve.

So my advice to this company?

Well I obviously had a lot to say, but here’s the annotated version:

1) Start again! The current site is a total waste of time. Redesign the navigation so the focus is all about them… the visitor, not you, the company.

2) Separate each ‘service bulletpoint’ into at least one full and very descriptive (but not boring) page.

Give specifics on how services have helped people, and where possible give case studies and live example of actual results achieved.

And ideally have a lot more than one page for each service — maybe even separate web sites. It really is true that “the more you tell them more you sell”, especially for ‘considered purchases’… like choosing someone to defend you in court and win a legal battle on your behalf for example.)

3) Add features that compel visiting prospective clients to enquire. “Contact Us?” Phooey! How about a form on every service page, where the title of the form ties into the service itself?

Also, and critically, test those pages (especially the enquiry forms themselves) until the conversion of “visitor into enquirer” is optimised.

Those just for starters. My forthcoming book explains all of these principles in a lot more detail, and if you’re subscribed to this site, you’ll get it e-mailed for free on 1st Feb.

-Ed.

Submitting short articles to third party web sites is a proven method for getting streams of valuable traffic on to your website.

However, in many cases it’s as much about quantity as quality. It’s no good just submitting one or two articles and then expecting an immediate increase in sales. Unfortunately it doesn’t happen like that. It generally takes time – and includes a lot of writing to produce a good volume of high quality articles.

 But there is a way to overcome this burden.

[tag]Article Spinning[/tag] allows you to create hundreds or even thousands of versions of a single article in a very short time. It’s a very powerful technique.

Unfortunately, it’s regarded as a ‘Dark Art’ by many Internet Marketers. They believe articles created by spinning software are generally worthless — that they somehow lack good readibility or ‘flow’ due to the software’s processes.

One thing I’ve noticed though, is that the better spinning softwares are perfectly capable of producing quality article variations.

The blame for poor quality ‘article spins’ may actually lie with the user, not the software!

So if spinning good quality articles is possible, then maybe a more important question is “why ‘spin’ your article content at all? And if you do spin content, is it ethical to do so?”

Well, with regards the former question — spinning is simply a way of making it far more likely your article will appear more than once in search engine results.

Because what the duplicate content penalty means is that even if you manage to get your beautifully written article published on hundreds of relevant web sites across the Internet, the search engines may see they are all the same article — and then only show one or two of those articles in their results.

Obviously only having your article show a small number of times — if at all — makes it far less likely the article will have any significant impact on your web site traffic. (Which is the main point of article marketing in the first place!)

But when you spin and submit multiple variations of the same article, you massively increase the chances of your articles appearing many times in the same search engine results.

On the subject of ethics…

“I believe article/content spinning is only unethical if the person using it is unethical.”

If your intention is simply to try and get as many people to read and benefit from your article as possible — and possibly also get a percentage of readers onto your main web site which also provides good quality products and services… then why would anyone say it’s unethical?

In summary, spinning your [tag]article marketing[/tag] content is in my mind a totally valid way of helping more people benefit from your knowledge… providing you keep the word ‘quality’ foremost in your mind at all times.

 ~ Ed.