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.
The new headline isn’t brilliant.
But it only took a few minutes to come up with it, and anyone can see it stands a better chance of selling the product in question than the original headline. With just a bit more work I reckon it could pass the “Clayton Makepeace 2 a.m. head slap test”.
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!!
