Your headlines are the single most important piece of content on your sales and opt-in pages aside from the buy or sign up button.
You could get away with nothing more than those two – headline and button.
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Yes, it’s that important and as with the blog post example, the rest of your copy doesn’t matter much if you can’t pull your visitors in with the headline.
Let’s take a look at why great headlines are so important and how you can get good at writing them.
Why Compelling Headlines Are Important
Without subscribers and customers, you don’t have an online business. And the best way to get either one is with a great sales page.
Your first task of business is to get them to read your sales page. It doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with a simple opt-in page, a video sales page, a traditional long-form sales letter, or a product listing.
If you can’t get them to pay attention, you’ve already lost the sale or opt-in.
Your headline is what grabs their attention, gets them to read, but also what sets the tone of your entire page.
It’s your chance to take the reader from where they are right now and guide them to where they need to be to make an informed decision about signing up or buying.
We’ll talk more about crafting a hook later. Once you have their attention it’s a matter of making sure your content flows and moves them right along, all the way to the button that you want them to press.
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Crafting Headlines With Your Target Audience In Mind
Think about your target audience. Why do they need the product you have to offer or why should they sign up for your list.
Then dig deeper. What’s their motivation?
What pain are they trying to relieve or what goal are they trying to reach?
Why is it important?
Once you know that you can start to craft your headline by speaking to those motivations.
Put yourself in their shoes. Think about what they need and what’s in it for them.
Make sure your content reflects that and speaks to that, including the wording of your headline.
Figure out what makes them click, what keeps them up at night and then offer a solution.
Flashy headlines Work, But…
Once you figure out what will get your readers’ attention, you’ll be tempted to use it in the strongest way possible.
You want to create a flashy headline that shouts at them to come here and look at what you have to offer.
There’s a way to do that and there’s a time and place for it.
That time and place is when you have an extremely strong offer that’s hard to resist and your main goal is volume of sales.
Save those flashy headlines for the occasional sale or special offer.
The rest of the time, you want to craft something that gets their attention without shouting at them.
There’s A Time To Keep It Short And Sweet
After all the research you’ve done on your target market, you have a lot of things you want to share with your readers in your headline.
The temptation is to make it fairly long by cramming as much information as you can into what’s essentially a short sentence.
Being able to boil it down into one short statement that conveys all that information takes time and practice.
Write your long headline.
Walk away and then come back with a clear head and start to edit it ruthlessly.
Take out any word or phrase that isn’t absolutely necessary.
Make it a habit to keep your headlines short, sweet, and to the point.
You want a reader to grasp them at a glance and decide to dive in and start reading.
You don’t want to lose them on step one because it’s too much work to figure out what this offer is all about.
“Hook Them” And Get Them Reading
Another great approach for crafting highly converting headlines is to find a hook.
Maybe it’s a short story or experience that you’re sharing with your readers to get them interested.
Make it a relatable story.
You’re sharing your experience and specific results.
Crafting good hooks isn’t something that’s easily learned. It takes time.
One of the best ways to get started is to watch for hooks in other people’s headlines and sales materials. Pay attention to what they are doing and how it works.
Pay special attention when a hook works on you.
Notice too how the hook goes beyond the headline. It may start there, but carries through the sales or opt-in page. The hook’s job is to pull them in and move them along.
You’ve Gotta Sell The Opt-In Too
When it comes to writing headlines, you may be thinking about sales pages only.
It’s easy to brush over the opt-in pages and throw something up.
Your opt-in pages are just as important to your business as your sales pages, if not more important.
Put just as much work and effort into them, including writing the headlines.
Getting those new subscribers on your list is worth all the time and effort it takes.
Don’t Assume – Test
I have one more important piece of advice to share with you when it comes to these types of headlines.
Do your research, do your best job writing the copy, but don’t assume you know what will work best and what will convert best.
Instead, write a headline and then start testing it against other headlines you come up with until you find a winner.
Never assume that you know your potential customers better than they know themselves.
Test and come up with the headlines that bring you the most conversions.
After all, that’s what it’s really about, isn’t it?
What are some of your favorite strategies for writing headlines? Leave us a comment.
Here are more tips on how to write killer headlines:
- Let’s Talk About Killer Headlines
- How To Write Killer Blog Post Titles That Convert
- How To Write Killer Headlines In Social Media
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