Lessons

Lesson Info

Draft Eye-Catching Headlines

All right, let's dive in to headlines. Because this is tricky thing, right? I find people get more tripped up by headlines, than probably anything else and it's something people spend absolutely no thought on, which is ridiculous, because it's the very first thing anyone sees on any page of your website. Why would you not spend any time on that? So the goal of the headline, that very first big line, color you'll love, scrapbooking is more fun with friends, the goal of any headline is to catch your attention and to keep you reading. If the headline doesn't capture your target customer's attention, there's a good chance they are going to click away immediately, and all the time and energy that you did put into the copy on your sales page, after you decided headlines don't matter, is gonna go to waste, and we don't want that. The other thing we don't want is for your headline to be the name of your product, because 99 times out of 100, no one cares what the name of your product is. All ri...

ght, are we clear on that? Are we clear on that, right? No one cares about what Digi Scrap Love is, until you tell them why they have to care. And so if you put that as the headline, Digi Scrap Love, no one cares. That's not capturing anyone's attention. Like, Digi Scrap Love, I don't know what that is, where, how'd I end up here, close, right? (chuckles) But this is what I see all the time. All the time, product names, service names, you know, life coaching with Susie, is the top of the headline, no one cares. Sorry, Susie, no one cares. (laughter) Now there are a few exceptions to this rule. Every so often a product name comes along that has a result embedded right in it, or has just a really ultimate goal buried right in it. Derek Halpern is the example that I always give for this. He is so good at naming products the results that people are looking for. So he's got a course called A Blog that Converts, right? You could use blog that converts as a headline, because that tells me something about what I'm actually getting here. I don't even, at that point I don't know that it's the name of the course. I just know that I want a blog that converts more customers, that sounds great. And so I'm gonna keep reading. So I just want you to know there are exceptions, but most likely, very most likely, your product is not one of them, okay? I'm terrible at this, by the way. I just wanna say, my product names are awful. (laughter) So I never use them as a headline. Always take time to create a headline that works. So how do you do that? How do you do that? Well, you use building blocks, you use templates. So, headline formulas are going to be your friend and just like sales page templates, you can create your own headline formulas. Here's our friendly Madison Reed example again. We're gonna be so familiar with Veronica, actual client, that (chuckles) you guys are gonna have to say goodbye to her at the end. So the headline here again is color you'll love, color you'll love, and we've already talked about how this is really just the most compelling bullet point from block number three, right? And if they were, if the marketers at Madison Reed were taking and building their campaign building blocks they might come up with a bunch of bullet points for the after, in block number three, and one of them was like, after you color your hair you're just gonna love it. And someone's like, that's really compelling, let me turn that into a headline, color you'll love. Boom, headline, done, great. Okay, so much better than making Madison Reed, which means nothing to me, or to anyone else, at this point, the biggest thing on the page. Madison Reed is an itty bitty little logo at the very top. Color you'll love is the big thing that everyone sees first. The most compelling block, compelling bullet point from block number three is our first headline formula. Here's another landing page that I really love the headline of. This is the landing page for Crowdcast. It's a live streaming service that I use, that I absolutely adore. Powers about half of our business at this point. Their headline on their main page is, connect with your audience through live video. Very direct, very succinct. It is not full of flowy words. It doesn't sound all snazzy and juicy. It just tells you what you need to know. Connect with your audience through live video. So let's break this down into a formula. The first part of the formula is the desired result from block number three, just one result that you want, in this case it's connecting with your audience. And then it includes the solution from block number two, what the true solution is. They say the true solution to connecting with your audience is live video. So connect with your audience from block number three, true solution, live video, from block number two. Smoosh em together, and you get this very nice, direct, clear headline, that starts the conversation about what this product is actually about. When you land on this page, you have a pretty good idea of what this product is about just from the headlines. About connecting with your audience through live video, makes sense? Okay, does not have to be juicy. It doesn't have to be flowery. It doesn't have to be snazzy. It needs to catch someone's attention and keep them reading. Next one is Isel's page from my friend Amanda Steinberg and DailyWorth. This is for their money clarity program. The headline here is replace money anxiety with clarity and control over your finances. So this is the longest headline we've had so far. Replace money anxiety with clarity and control over your finances. What's the headline formula here? Replace pain point from block number three, so a pain point from the after, with ultimate goal from block one. All right let's look at it again. So replace, there's block number three, a pain point, a particular pain point, money anxiety. That's gonna resonate with the vast majority of us, right? With clarity and control over your finances. That's that ultimate goal. I don't just want to save more money every month. What I really want, my ultimate goal is clarity and control over my finances. So you've got that embedded in your building blocks already too. You've got a pain point that people can replace with their ultimate goal, make sense? Kay, let's take, I think one more. This is from Ramit Sethi. It's the landing page actually, not a sales page for his earn one k program. You're one step away from launching a successful online business. You're one step away from launching a successful online business. The headline formula here is, you're one step away from, and a compelling result from block number three, a compelling result from the after. What's one thing that you know your product is going to help someone accomplish that's super compelling to them? Your product probably helps people accomplish all sorts of things. We just want one. What's the most compelling one. You're one step away from a compelling result from block number three. Now headline formulas are all over the Internet. (chuckles) You can find so many of these, so even if you don't want to try your own to create your own doing the kind of super fun marketing analysis we've been talking about here, you can find lots and lots of headline formulas. They don't use the whole building blocks concept, but now that you have your building blocks down it'll be much more easy, or much easier for you to use those headline formulas. And the two places I go, and I literally do this every time I go to write a headline, I look up the headline formulas at Copyblogger and I look up the headline formulas at Copyhackers. And I will write 10, 15, 20, 30 headlines before I find the one I like best. So sometimes I'll write five different versions of one formula, sometimes I'll write 10 different versions of one formula, sometimes it's just one. Some of them sound completely idiotic, and that's okay. You gotta get through the trash to find the gem in there. Your goal is not to sit down and write the perfect headline. Your goal is to brainstorm as many different options as possible, and in that process, find the one that really speaks to you, the one that really grabs your attention. When you do that, not only are you finding a great headline, but most likely you're also find the hook of your entire sales page. So once you've got this spit draft done, you come back up to the headline, you make sure you've got that headline right, and then you go back and you edit that spit draft to make sure that that hook, that one compelling idea for your sales page is embedded throughout all of that copy. No matter how long or short that copy is. Make sense? All right, let's give this a try. Are you ready, Lynette? I'm ready. Okay, let me get to a good page, we're gonna write a whole bunch. This is good, cause I think this is the part I'm not good at (chuckles). Yeah, this is the part no one is good at. That's why we have headline formulas. I just wanna make that clear. I am not good at this. I write a lot of headline options and then I choose one. Most compelling bullet point from block number three. We already have scrapbooking is more fun with friends, right? Yeah. That's the before and after. Yeah, that's the, we're looking specifically at the after here. So what's another compelling bullet point from the after? I know we talked a little about being like creatively inspired, but I don't know how to write in a better way. Yeah, what about something like Maybe like something like confidence to do something. What about like, declare, this is gonna be really cheesy, but this is a good example of being cheesy. Declare your scrapbooking independence. Just an idea. How bout one more from that headline formula? How bout something like push your creative boundaries. Okay. This is usually how it goes, where I'm like uh. (chuckles) I know, I'm putting you on the spot too, so I'm gonna fill in some blanks for you, but I just wanna show, this is really what we do here, we write as many different options as possible. Next one is desired result from block number three, so again, similar ideas to here. Plus solution from block number two. So what's the, what was in your true solution box? True solution box? In block number two. Oh, I didn't have anything in that one. (laughter) That's one I didn't get to. Okay, so community essentially is the true solution. Getting together with other scrapbookers. Is there anything kind of under the surface of that, is there a particular methodology behind that? Yeah, well I think like everything that I offer is something that I've actually done and used for like my own scrapbooking process. But I don't have like a name for it necessarily. All right, all right. You know what's funny is actually scrapbooking is more fun with friends fits this idea too, cause friends kind of the true solution. And then, so we could do something similar where we could say like, we could just add onto these, so like, push your creative boundaries with community support. Not super compelling, but you get the idea. You could also do, scrapbooking independence starts with, actually you could do something like, scrapbooking independence starts with pushing your creative boundaries, or starts with friends, starts with community, you could create all sorts of options for that. All right, that gives us a few. All right, next one is replace pain point from block number three with ultimate goal from block number one. So what's a pain point? Feeling stuck. Okay. And what is the ultimate goal? With creative competence, is that-- Ooh, I like that. How bout another one. Replace, what's another pain point? I was gonna say uncertainty, but that's kinda similar to stuck. Is anxiety another, I know that's from the example, but is there like scrapbooking anxiety? Yeah, I mean, I think people get kind of stressed about? Ooh, scrapbooking stress. That is a big one, yeah. (laughter) Any time you can use alliteration, it's a good thing. Replace scrapbooking stress with, well then we could use this same thing. Replace scrapbooking stress with creative confidence. You know what, I like this, so to me, scrapbooking stress is way more compelling than stuck because you can be stuck at all, it tells me nothing, other than I feel stuck, okay. But inserting scrapbooking in here, tells me more about what this product is right away, it really kind of is in keeping with actually the previous example, where the goal is to be really straightforward and actually tell people something about the product or something about why the product is right for them right there in that headline. So replace scrapbooking stress with creative confidence. That's my favorite yet. We'll see if we can do better than that. All right, you're one step away from? Compelling result from block number three. So another after. What is like the one thing people want with scrapbooking? Like if they could just change one thing, what would it be? I mean I feel like right now it's been a lot of people like wanting to have like that community, like they want to be with, like not feel alone. All right, I'm gonna push you back on this, just out of personal experience. People say they want community, they don't actually care. You have to give them a reason to care. And so if you do your one step away from scrapbooking community, trust me, it is not gonna go well. (laughter) I don't think I would use that. I speak from experience. How bout you're one step away from never needing another scrapbooking template? Okay. Yeah, you're one step away from, one step away from, maybe something about complete, completed projects? You're one step away from Projects you're proud of? Projects you're proud of. (laughter) Love it, so I'm curious, which of these do you guys like best? Yeah, so we've got scrapbooking's more fun with friends, declare your scrapbooking independence, push your creative boundaries, push your creative boundaries with community support, scrapbooking independence starts with friends, replace stuck with creative confidence, replace scrapbooking stress with creative confidence, you're one step away from never needing another template, you're one step away from projects you're proud of. Scrapbooking stress. Scrapbooking stress, that one? Yeah, yeah. So people are very excited about this one. All right, you know what I love about this one too? Is now you've got two phrases that you can repeat throughout this copy, okay? And so, you start using scrapbooking stress as sort of like the catch-all phrase. You're gonna expand on it, you're gonna explain it, you're going to kind of push on that pain point, agitate that pain point. But every time then, once you do that, every time you say scrapbooking stress, you get the benefit of all of that copy that you've used before around that, and then the same thing happens with creative confidence. So you start using creative confidence essentially as a stand in for never needing another template, for you know getting support you need. And so, those two phrases give you hooks for the whole rest of your copy. And so everything here still applies, but now you have an even better guideline for how you're going to mold those words and ideas and phrases and images to support your argument. Make sense? Yeah. It's funny, I have, one of the products I offer the headline is mess free, stress free, holiday scrapbooking, and like that was like my headline. I love it. The stress like in there. Yeah, I love it. And you know I think probably with hobbies, like stress is something we absolutely do not want, but I think our hobbies do cause us a lot of stress. Or you know it's that sort of, it's the stress of like not having time for it, it's the stress of not having as good at it as you want, it's the stress of all of those things, and so I think that is super compelling and it brings that creative confidence piece in here, which then you can support with personal values. You can support with the argument around community. You can support this pushing creative boundaries place with that. I love it. Do you feel good about it? Yeah, I have one question about in like the sales page, the blocks, where do you add in like the actual like features like what you're actually gonna get? Where does that go in here? In this template it's happening right here. So this is where you would say okay, you get access to this, you get this many templates, you get this many calls, or you get this many chats, whatever it might be, and then you're going to, for each feature that you have, little copywriting trick, you're gonna turn it into a benefit by saying here's what the feature is, so you can, and then you give them why that should be important to them, okay? So you get access to community, so you can share your projects and get constructive feedback every time you complete something, okay? So now we've taken a feature we've turned it into a benefit, and then over here with templates, you're gonna be like, you're on your own. You're on your own, (chuckles), no one cares. (laughter) you're embarrassed at the same old project over and over again, maybe not that bad, but you know, that's the idea (chuckles). Okay, another magic phrase that you can use in here is even if. So you can say, something like, design instruction so you can create, well, this uses both, design instruction so you can create your own templates, even if you're not a graphic designer. Okay, and so yeah, you're gonna tell em all about the features in here. This template is pretty appropriate to the product that you're selling. I think probably there is a need to expand on it a little bit more. And so asking a question like that, of where does this fit in may cue you in to okay I'm gonna use everything from this template and also I need to add in this block, or this block, or I need to get clearer on the features, and I'm gonna add that in where it makes sense. So, just because you have a template, doesn't mean (chuckles) you need to stick with it, right? Just like with scrapbooking, I'm sure. All right, I didn't even, I was not even thinking about how perfect an example this was going to be. All right, any questions about what we did with Lynette's headlines? All right, Lynette, thank you very much. This was such a great example. So you can really see how we can build a sales page extremely quickly. We can find a headline that makes that sales page even better extremely quickly. And in doing so, we've started with the end in mind. Now we know, Lynette knows now, what the main hook of her sales process is going to be. Everything else she creates needs to support this idea that you're gonna replace scrapbooking stress with creative confidence. She's gonna know how that needs to happen or how she needs to explain that. And the whole rest of her marketing campaign is going to end up referring back to that. I'm gonna show you how to do that in upcoming lessons, of course. Like I said, your headline can act as a hook that anchors your entire campaign. It becomes the whole point of the story that you're telling through your campaign. Yes, you read my mind, questions is the next slide. Sorry, do you recommend doing headlines usually after going through a template? Yes, so I would template everything out, I would do that initial kind of spit draft, and then I'd come back and come up with all the different headline options, and then I would re-edit that template if necessary, after I've learned, okay this is the headline that I really really want. Again, beautiful example here. What we learned is that there are two phrases that are really going to act as the shorthand for this transformation that Lynette's community is going to create, and so all we need to do then is make sure that as we go through that template, that we're using those phrases throughout. Yours may end up needing a little more editing. It may not need any editing, which is also great, but I like kind of iterating through the process a few times, because essentially what you're doing is writing new drafts or coming up with new drafts, but way faster than actually drafting it out and then redrafting it, and then redrafting it again. And it's gonna be a lot more effective cause the other thing that I've found, both from personal experience and with watching clients and members struggle through this as well, is that once you've actually written a draft, it's hard to get the feedback that no, that doesn't work, right? And so if you're drafting through a template process an outline, you don't have anything invested in this yet. So if you come up with a headline that takes you in a completely different direction. You ended up scrapping this, it happens. You haven't invested anything in it. You're much more likely to make the right decision that this is actually the direction I need to go. Make sense? Great, yup. Other questions? No, any questions online? Yes, we have some questions online. Sarah says, do you have any suggestions for super niche business product pages? I'm a ballet teacher. Woo, I love this question, Sarah. Yes, so the more niche your product is, the more you wanna call out that niche in your sales page as quickly as possible. So again in your headline, in that first area of your sales page, you wanna make that niche super clear. Really when you're talking about a niche, you're talking about the target customer 99 times out of 100, and so that's actually really helpful to you in any sales process. It's cause the more people know you're talking to them specifically, that this is something that was crafted just for them because they fit into your tiny little niche, the better. The more likely they are to pay attention, the more likely they are then to follow you the whole way through and actually get to the buying part of the process. So any time you've got a niche, any time you've got a super targeted idea of who you're selling to, make sure that you make that a focal point of your offer. And you can actually look for templates that do that same sort of thing. Next one, Matthew says, when the price point for a custom product is fairly high, how do we educate people to see the value of an original? So I think what you mean is an original piece of art? Really the whole job of a sales page is educating people of the value behind it. Now, generally on a piece of art, you're probably gonna have, fairly short product page. A fairly short description of what it is that you're doing. And the way you can get around that with art, where you might be tempted to tell this really long story is to do it visually. So if you look actually at a lot of product pages, they'll tell a visual story instead, so it'll almost be like a visual template. They'll show a before and after, or they'll show you know exactly what the ultimate goal is, that will be one of the images that they're displaying, and so you can actually go and look at websites in, for comparable businesses and see, you know, is there a template there with visual images, that you can follow in much the same way that we're doing with words here. But even when we're talking about words, the whole point of the sales page is to educate people. The biggest piece when it comes to value is transformation, value is transformation. It's the change that people feel, it's the difference that your product is making in their lives, it's a goal realized, it's a problem solved. And so if you wanna educate people on value, you need to make that transformation crystal clear and you need to make that transformation feel as big as possible. The bigger the transformation is, the more valuable something is going to feel. Now, the bigger that transformation is, the more proof you need as well, because huge transformations, you know, can sound like snake oil sometimes, and so that's when, and that's why those $2,000 courses, or that $20,000 Mastermind, that's why they have super long sales pages quite often, because it takes a lot of time to really prove out, to tell the story of that transformation and make it feel like it's really possible. So any time you're asking about educating the customer on value you need to be thinking about what is that actual transformation, building block number three, and building block number one, what is that big transformation, what's that little transformation, what's that super needed transformation, and how are you going to show that your product is what creates that transformation. That's what you want to be thinking about.