I want to cover the advantages you can gain by writing a headline that offers a specific benefit.
Let me say first that a strong headline need not offer a specific benefit to be a strong, attention-grabbing headline that pulls like hotcakes. But do you know what the headline’s primary objective is?
The headline’s primary objective is to grab a reader’s attention and arouse their curiosity enough to make them want to read what comes next — the first sentence in your main body of copy. This can be done in a variety of ways, of course.
But you are looking for a hot button.
A strong advertisement contains this crucial element: FOCUS.
A strong advertisement knows exactly who it is selling to, and it’s certainly not selling to a committee. A strong ad sells to one specific person. This person is the designated representative to speak on behalf of your entire market. He or she has specific traits, personal goals, and desires.
You want to punch that person’s hot button, and you do that with your strongest attention-grabbing headline.
Offering a specific benefit that’s tuned to your reader’s desires will set their hot button on fire.
The beauty of this approach is that it is effective. It works. In fact, it works so well that most of your competitors don’t even use it. To see my point, just take a look at this poor specimen:
This is some faceless winery that is trying to convince you to choose it over other wineries. The ad tells us that it’s a luxury lodge located in Napa Valley. It shows us that it’s a good place for friends or family to gather and drink wine. How many of those do you think exist in Napa? It tried to be clever: “Where Wining is Encouraged.” Maybe you’ll laugh (though I doubt it). But instead of being clever, it should have punched the hot button of its best customers. Nothing in this ad sets it apart from the numerous other similar places in the valley. It is just one of 20 “luxury hotels in Napa Valley” on Trip Advisor. Someone is losing money on this ad.
So, are you a bad writer? Do you lack a creative talent for writing great prose or turning great (or “clever”) phrases? Does your writing read as if it were written by a 10th grader?
Perfect! Then there’s nothing to hold you back from writing a strong headline. In fact, if you do have talent it will probably just be wasted when writing effective advertising. You are writing to persuade people to hand over their hard-earned money to you — not to impress an academic committee of professors who possess lifelong tenure without ever having to produce something desirable on the free market a day in their life.
Writing a strong headline is something anyone can do who possesses the following two traits:
- They are familiar with the product or service they are selling
- They are familiar with the representative person they are selling it to
As a business owner or seller of goods and services, do you meet these two criteria? Who knows more about your business than you do? Who better understands your customers than you do?
Perhaps this is one reason ads commonly avoid this simple but effective headline-writing tactic. A strong headline does not have to be glamorous or clever to be effective. Human creativity naturally wants to buck this weighty truth of advertising.
But if you are interested in raising revenues and generating a better return on your own ads, then you can profit by bucking the conventional wisdom offered by modern advertising.
And if you don’t believe me? Then test it. Run two ads. One conventional, one employing the philosophy I’ve written about here. See which one pulls better. Then you’ll know for sure.
If you are eager to put this into practice, but you simply don’t have enough time on your hands, please feel free to email me by clicking here: john@acworthcopywriting.com. I would be happy to lend you a hand.