"Man Bites Dog!": The Power of Hook 'Em Headlines

by Roy Miller

Published on this site: September 15th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

Many people slap any old headline on their sales page. They figure the rest of the copy on the page counts more. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, if you don't write the headlines for your copy first, you're doing it wrong. They're that important.

The headline almost everybody knows about is the one at the top of a sales page.

Here's an example of one of mine:

"Create a Huge Passive Income
30-60 Days from today
Starting From Scratch
With no Experience, no List,
and no Product of Your Own
...without spending another dime on stuff to sell."

Notice a few things about it:

• It has a "hook" that draws the reader in ("Create a huge passive income...").
  
  
• It's a sales message by itself (it's full of relevant facts, and stands alone).
  
  
• It compels people to keep reading so they can find out how to create that huge passive income.

Your "hook" has to be something that hits an emotional hot button for folks in your target market. It's not entirely emotional--passive income can be a factual reality--but it has to hit the emotions at least as much as it tugs at the brain.

Never forget your goal for this headline: keep them reading. If they don't read the rest of your copy, you won't get the sale. Period.

If you write that headline first, the rest of your sales copy will flow naturally from it. It will save you hours of wandering about in the weeds wondering why your copy doesn't "flow".

This is exactly the kind of thing my upcoming Power Copywriting Workshop is going to cover, and in even more depth. Next time, learn why meeting people's deepest needs will explode your subscriber list.

Roy Miller - created http://www.Resale-Money-Machine.com. Want to create intensely powerful sales copy that compels people to tear open their wallets and throw money at you--no matter what you charge? Roy is going to teach only 35 people how: http://www.Resale-Money-Machine.com/powercopy.