Viloria.com > Ecommerce Articles > Advertising Headlines That Make You Rich
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The
Secret Behind Million-Dollar Ads Want a little secret to turn
your advertising into an irresistible magnet for customers? Dale Carnegie knew the secret,
and that’s one reason his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People,
has sold more than 15 million copies. In
fact, British Airways recently named it, “The Business Book of the 20th
Century.” It’s a great book.
But if Dale had titled it “How to Remember People’s Names and Curb
Your Incessant Urge to Argue,” do you think it would have sold as well?
Probably not. There’s
great power in good titles. What you may not realize is the
words “How to Win Friends and Influence People” are not only the title
of the book. Those words were also
the headline of a mail-order ad, which sold the book.
The ad ran successfully for many years and sold hundreds of thousands
of copies. So what does this have to do
with turning your advertising into an irresistible customer magnet? Here’s what.
Behind the title and headline is a “secret code” that makes it
powerful. Dale knew it.
Great advertising copywriters know it.
And now, you’re going to know it, too. The “secret code” is
actually a generic formula that gets attention and creates desire in your
prospect’s mind. Every winning
headline has a unique generic formula hidden inside.
Here’s the formula in Dale Carnegie’s book title and headline: How to _____ and _____. Let’s see the formula at
work. Say you are an executive
recruiter, and you help companies find new executives.
In reality, your biggest problem is finding the executive candidates in
the first place. So, to increase
your group of candidates, you decide to run an ad in your local business
journal. Here’s how you could use
this formula to write a headline for your ad: How to Get a Better Job and Make More Money
…and
right after reading that headline, anyone who’s even a little interested would
want to read your ad immediately. Then, if your copy (text) is even
halfway decent, you’d get plenty of calls. Or, let’s say you run a
martial arts school. Here’s how
you could apply the formula in an advertising headline to get you new students: How to Stay Fit and Protect Yourself
Do you see how powerful that
is? You’ve just zeroed-in on
people who are likely to be interested in learning martial arts. The brutal reality of
advertising: An ad with a good
headline and even mediocre copy will get you a response and generate
sales. But with a poor headline,
even the most brilliant copy will get you little or no response.
Why? Because without a good
headline to get their attention, most people won’t read any further. The good news is, once you have
identified a good headline that works in one industry or market, you can adapt
it (like we did with the Dale Carnegie headline, above) for your own business.
Great headlines work as subject lines in emails, titles on Web pages, and
of course as headlines in print ads and sales letters.
Great headlines will literally transform your sales. How does this work in today’s
economy? Recently a client asked me to
help him introduce a new service to Internet Service Providers.
(Note: To understand what you are about to read, you should know that
ISPs call their suppliers “backbone providers.”)
I wrote a direct mail letter and my client sent it out to ISPs.
Because my client was revealing new information his prospects hadn’t
heard before, we used the following “teaser headline” on the front of the
envelope: What Your Backbone Provider Isn’t Telling You
Was this an entirely original
headline? No.
I had seen a similar “teaser headline” on a successful mailing to
promote an investment newsletter: What Your Broker Isn’t Telling You About
High-Tech Stocks
So I merely identified the
“secret code” in the original winning headline, and applied it to my
client’s market, ISPs. The response to the mailing was
overwhelming! Nearly 10% of
the entire ISP industry responded to our letter – and my client has added eight
figures of new annual revenues as a result of the business that developed. I’m telling you this not to
brag, but to point out the awesome power of good headlines.
While many people spend hours and hours trying to come up with “the
perfect headline” for their ads, there is an easier way.
Find proven headlines that already work for another business in another
industry, and adapt them to your business.
David Garfinkel has
been described as “the world’s greatest copywriting coach.”
He’s a successful results-oriented copywriter and the author of “Advertising
Headlines That Make You Rich,” which shows you how proven
money-making headlines customized for your business can
increase your profits by 1700%.
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