Google Cash Revolution – How to write a sales document, headlines and power words

March 10, 2010
By Jon

How to write a sales document, headlines and power words

If there is a logo or a design that you’ve been using for your website, use it in the landing page only if it is really pertinent to what you are offering. You are not selling your logo; you are selling benefits that the buyer will realize if he buys the product you’re promoting. Use a specific image that is inherent to your headline, content, and theme, or do not use one at all. When it comes to opening your landing page, stick to words as far as possible.

The Sub-headline:

The sub-headline or pre-headline is a line or two in smaller font above the main headline. It can be used effectively to gain the attention of your visitor. The subhead is like an extension of the headline.

Basically, the subhead doesn’t have to be as bold as the headline, but should still grab the reader’s attention. You goal here is to make the subhead as catchy as possible. You can use it as highlighted, a note that gives a hint that there is much more to come if the reader just keeps reading.

To write a good sub-headline, think of it as a headline with a very specific point. Your headline is basically introducing the whole, general copy. Your sub-headline, on the other hand, is introducing a specific part of your copy.

Where headlines can be very generic and broad in scope, a subhead cannot. It needs to be specific and very focused. It should be relevant to the market that you’re targeting.

For example, if your target market consists of people who own poodles, your sub-headline may simply be: “Attention Poodle Owners!”

If you own a poodle, I bet you’d at least read the headline if you saw a pre-head that called out to poodle owners. So, the more specific you can be the better. Try to narrow down the target market further then address them in your pre-headline. In the previous example, you can drill down father and come up with, say, “Attention Toy Poodle Owners!”

Piece of cake, isn’t it? So that’s all there is to it: narrow down your target market and reach out to your visitor.

The Headline:

Your headline is the most important part of your entire sales letter.

After all, if it doesn’t do its job (which is to capture attention), the rest of your landing page is worthless because IT WON’T BE READ. Always keep this in mind: Your headline isn’t meant to sell the reader the product or service. That’s what the rest of the page is for. The headline is simply what you use to grab your reader and pull them into the rest of your copy

Think of it this way: the goal of your headline is to get the potential buyer to start reading the sales letter.

The headline is usually less than 30 words long. It should be catchy and it should grab the reader’s attention and tell him what the landing page is all about. Ideally, the job of the headline is to list the product’s most important benefit, and make an assurance.

Here’s a caveat though: your headline needs to be completely relevant to the rest of the copy. Grabbing your reader’s attention with the headline is cool but you can’t put out a shocking headline like “The President Has Been Assassinated!” just to get attention, and then go on to try to sell vitamins to the readers. I won’t get into what’ll happen if you do such a thing but let’s just say it’ll involve the top right hand corner of the browser window, and a mouse click.

With the headline, you need to speak to your reader directly about something that’s important to him or her. You already know what’s important to them because by know, you should’ve already done enough research into your market. But whatever you do, it absolutely must be relevant to the visitor and to the sales copy that follows.

A Killer Headline

If you can create a headline that does two things: promise a huge benefit, and arouse curiosity, you’ll have a winner.

Now, I understand that there may be many different benefits associated with using the product or service you’re promoting. What you want to do now is identify the biggest benefit associated with your product, and promise this benefit to readers if they keep reading.

In order to know what your biggest benefit is, you also need to be aware of what is important to your target market. For example, if you’re targeting wealthy women to sell them expensive jewelry, I can bet that touting it as providing “good value” in the headline isn’t going to capture their attention. The lead benefit of your product here is prestige. If I were a rich woman out buying a necklace, I’d be looking for the one that would garner the most jealous stares from other rich women. Get my drift?

In addition to figuring out what’s important to your prospects, you’ll also want to consider some more “universal” wants of people. For example, people want quick and easy solutions. They want to feel better, be more attractive, be wealthier and look younger (among other things).

If you can give your prospects a quick and easy way to look younger, mention that in the headline! If you can give them a quick and easy way to get richer, then by all means let them know.

Also keep in mind some of the “power words” that you can use to stop people in their tracks. The word “you” is one of the most powerful words you can use in your headline and elsewhere in your copy, so use it generously (without stuffing).

After all, people are only interested in how your products benefit them. Remember, it’s all about them not you. As they read your copy, they’re thinking, “What’s in it for me?” If you orient the copy towards this end, your copy is already taking a big step towards locking down the sale.

Are there other “power words” to use in my copy?
Of course there are; here are some of the examples:

People also like new things: words like “new,” “introducing,” and “break-through” tend to capture plenty of attention.

People like knowing things that others don’t know: using words like “secrets, “revealed” and “discover” are really powerful words to use in your copy.

And as I’ve already mentioned, since people like their solutions quick and easy: use words that convey the message where applicable (quick, easy, fast etc).

In the jargon of advertising, the following are a few other commonly used power words:

1.Breakthrough
2.Discover
3.Discovery
4.Easy
5.Free
6.Guaranteed
7.Hidden
8.Incredible
9.Love
10.Master
11.Money
12.New
13.Powerful
14.Profits
15.Proven
16.Results
17.Revealed
18.Scientific
19.Secret
20.Shocked
21.Shocking
22.Ultimate
23.Uncovered
24.You
25.Your

Alright, now that you know what’s important to your prospects, and what kind of “power words” to use to capture attention, you can start writing your headlines. Notice that I said “headlines” and not the singular “headline.” Since this is the most important part of your landing page, it only makes sense to spend a good amount of time crafting the very best headline you can.

Ground rule: You should draft dozens of headlines for your landing page. Don’t stop when you think you’ve got a good one on your hands. Keep going, and you’ll likely come up with an even better one. This is what the professionals do — some copywriting experts regularly write 50 to 100 headlines! If nothing else, these headlines can all be variations that you can use in your testing cycles.

Now, let’s look at a specific example of how to transform an average headline into something much more compelling…

Let’s suppose you’re promoting a wrinkle cream that helps users smooth out laugh lines, eliminate crow’s feet wrinkles, etc. Perhaps you’d start out with a headline like:

“Here’s How to Eliminate Crow’s Feet and Laugh Lines.”

It isn’t the best you can do, but everyone’s got to start somewhere. So the problem with this headline is that eliminating crow’s feet and laugh line wrinkles is a feature associated with using the cream. Do you remember how we talked about using benefits as the lead selling point of your landing pages? Sure, many people will make the logical jump between the features (eliminating wrinkles) and the benefits of using the cream.

However, your job is to make it easy on the reader and lay out the benefits clearly, so the prospects don’t have to spend time thinking about how the product will benefit them.

Okay, what are the benefits associated with these features of the cream you’re selling? Overall, smoothing-out and eliminating wrinkles makes you look younger. And a person who looks younger is “obviously” more attractive, happier, wins more dates, etc.

Using these benefits, we can tweak the example headline into this: “Here’s How to Eliminate Crow’s Feet and Laugh Lines to Make You Look Younger.”

OK, that’s a little better but still isn’t the killer we’re looking for. So let’s get a bit more specific. Instead of simply saying “younger,” let’s say “Ten Years Younger”:

“Here’s How to Eliminate Crow’s Feet and Laugh Lines Quick and Easy to Make You Look Ten Years Younger.”

Do you see how this is way better than the original headline? But you’re not done yet. From here you should start tweaking this to make it go from “average” to downright compelling.

For example, you may start crafting variations of this headline such as:

“Discover the Secret of Looking Ten Years Younger… in Just 5 Minutes a Day!”

“Here’s an Anti-Aging Cream that Makes You Look So Young and Beautiful that Your Husband will Call You his Trophy Wife!”

“In Just 21 Days from Now, You’ll look so Young that People Will Mistake Your Teenage Daughter for Your Sister!”

And so on. Keep tweaking and crafting new headlines until you have several strong ones. After you roll out your copy, you can start testing headlines to see which ones convert best.

Types of headlines:

So we’ve looked at the core process of writing a good headline. But did you know that there are, in fact, different types of headlines? I’m going to describe the most common of these below; you can use any of these in your copy regardless of what market you’re in or what you’re promoting.

  • Direct headlines. This type of headline is blunt and straight to the point. The reader should clearly know what is being sold and what the great offer in just by reading the headline. This is the type of headline we’ve been discussing about throughout this section.
  • Indirect headlines. Unlike a direct headline, this type of headline uses a subtle manner of communication. Its main goal is to make the reader curious about what’s in the rest of the landing page as opposed to what’s in the product itself. These headlines often use double-speak and contextual humor to pique interest.
  • News headlines. This type of headline is basically an announcement. It is something newsworthy. For example: “Attention: Toy Poodle Owners! Groundbreaking New E-Book on House Training Promises To Discipline Your Dog in Just 2 Weeks or Less!”
  • ‘How-to’ headlines. This type of headline is very popular. It works well at selling almost any type of infoproduct. Basically, the headline starts with the words ‘how to’ and goes on from there.
  • Question headlines. Since you’re making landing pages, most of the people land on them after clicking on an ad of yours. This clearly means they have a burning problem or a question that they’re looking to have solved. A question headline attempts to reflect that exact same question that is going through the reader’s mind. Ex: “Who Else Wants to Make $834.27 Every Week, Working Right from Home with Zero Investment?” This creates an “intuitive” feel and intrigues your visitors to read further.
  • Command headlines. This type of headline basically tells the reader to do something. The trick to this type of headline is to use strong words that will trigger action in the reader. Ex: “Quick! Sign up to my “Poodle Master” list right now and get free Instant Access to over $1999 worth of poodle-training material absolutely free! Only 4 slots left!” Be careful, though, that you don’t sound like some dictator and turn people off right at the start.
  • Numbered headlines. This is, by far, the type of headline you can come up with the fastest. It is basically meant to highlight a certain number of things the reader will learn or benefit if they read on, for example: ‘Here Are 5 Top Secret Ways to Lose 10 lbs of Belly Fat In 2 Month Or Less!’

No matter which style of headline you choose, make sure you don’t get too carried away with it. If a headline is too wordy, then your visitor may avoid reading it at all. In general, headlines should stick to a maximum of two to two and a half lines using large font.

This should help you find those Killer titles and headlines and increase your affiliate marketing writing skills. Don’t forget to leave a comment, have a click about, there are more free hints and tips all over my blog.

Jonathan Mitchell

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One Response to “ Google Cash Revolution – How to write a sales document, headlines and power words ”

  1. For Homeowners: How to Put Home Information at Classifieds on March 11, 2010 at 9:25 am

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