Your website copy has several very important jobs. The
first and most important job is to draw readers into your
site. Additionally it has to answer questions, sell your
product or service, get people to join a mailing list and
more.
To make sure you are writing power copy that is sure to
grab your prospects attention and make them beg for what
you have, I am going to share some copywriting tips and
secrets.
Let's get started with the first and most important
element...
Headlines like this one:
"Discover The Top 3 Crucial Tips You Must Know To Create
Powerful Headlines and Stop Losing Sales"
With only a few seconds to grab the attention of your site
visitor and pull them into your site, your headline is the
most important element of your website.
Many people think of their website as a store, and they
open with "Welcome." After all if you have a store and
someone walks in, you are going to welcome them to your
store. This is a mistake for websites. Let me explain.
When someone lands on your site, they are not actually in
your store yet. They are standing outside your store - they
are looking at the sign and the window display and trying
to decide if they want to come in.
Your headline is your sign and your window display - it is
what has to entice visitors to come in and browse.
It is only once they start reading your copy and checking
out what you have to offer (clicking other links, looking
at pictures etc) that they are actually in your store.
So, you could have great copy, wonderful products or
services at great prices, an exciting offer or breaking
news and it just doesn't matter unless people read it.
Don't fool yourself into thinking your site doesn't need a
headline. It may not be a "sales letter site"; you may look
at it as a catalog site or an information brochure site -
but either way it doesn't matter. You need a compelling
headline to get people to come in and look around.
A lot of time, effort and research (testing) have gone into
writing the perfect headline. Please remember that you
should test different headlines and see what works for you.
To get you started, here are the Top 3 things you must
know....
1. You may be familiar with AIDA. It stands for Attention,
Interest, Desire and Action. It means you have to remember
to: capture your reader's attention, arouse their interest,
increase their desire and lead them to take some kind of
action. All are important pieces of the puzzle. You have to
remember with a headline, the action you want them to take
at this point is just to keep reading. Let's explore
increase their desire. What that really means is to elicit
an emotional response from them. People buy based on
emotion. In addition to desire, another great motivator is
fear. In face, fear of loss is a greater motivator than
desire to gain.
So, the key to remember is that you want to illicit an
emotional response for the reader. Let's look at my
headline as a sample of using fear.
Look at the headline I used on this article "Discover The
Top 3 Crucial Tips You Must Know To Create Powerful
Headlines ...." - the first part can cause people to feel
uncomfortable (fear) - they don't want to be the only one
that doesn't know! And then I added "to Stop Losing Sales"
which creates an even stronger element of fear. No one
wants to lose sales, so they are going to read further and
find out what they need to know.
Let's look at the process many new writers go through when
writing headlines. Here are some sample variations of my
headline.
First draft:
Information You Need About Headlines - This is short, to
the point and tells people what they can expect. However
there is nothing exciting, it does mention information "you
need" but it just doesn't have enough of an impact to
really cause people to feel they are missing something.
Draft 2....
The Most Important Information You Must Have About
Headlines - This is getting better but it is still not
right. You are implying there is a lot of information out
there and telling them that you have the most important
information. It is still too vague though, so let's take
another stab and make it more specific.
Draft 3...
The Top 3 Things You Must Know About Headlines - This is
more direct and makes people feel like there are some very
important and specific pieces of information they need to
have. This has now created an element of fear - fear that
they are going to miss out on knowing the Top 3most
important things. Of all the things there are to know,
these 5 are the things that must know, no matter what.
And finally, the last version:
Discover The Top 3 Crucial Tips You Must Know To Create
Powerful Headlines and Stop Losing Sales - I have added
another element to be afraid of. Now people are not only
afraid of what they don't know but they are also afraid of
losing sales because of it. I also added a verb at the
start and jazzed up the wording to create more of an impact.
2. Use action words - verbs! Telling people what to go
encourages readership and guides them. You can use words
like:
Discover Find Get Learn Join See Read Etc An example would
be: "Discover Top Weight Loss Secrets" instead of just
saying "Top Weight Loss Secrets". You are telling them what
to do - they need to discover the information. It is
implied that they will do so by reading your content.
3. Don't be too vague, however you also don't want the
headline to act as a summary of the content and go into
great detail.
This headline doesn't give away any details information,
it's not a summary of the content - but it still tells in
very descriptive words what they can expect - so it arouses
their curiosity. People want to know what these little
known methods are.
So, when considering length, don't purposely make it long
or short - simply make it the length it needs to be to
properly grab attention, get prospects interested, increase
their desire and get them to take action.
Sample headline:
How The 'Top Guns' of Internet Marketing Quietly Drive
Truckloads of Targeted Traffic To Their Sites With These
Little Known, But Lethally Powerful Methods"
----------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing and co-owner
of http://www.EcomBuffet.com
Since 1998, her expertise in
online marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has
helped clients increase revenue and achieve their business
goals. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on Search
Engine Optimization and has been published in many SEO and
marketing publications. Jennifer can be reached at
Jennifer@ecombuffet.com
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