Yesterday I sent you to a link on YouTube by Trevor Crooks, an Australian copywriter who had a great illustration on the power of headlines. The link, if you didn't get it, is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO1adJvZneA.
Now to recap, the example used were the actual results from a chiropractor's ads. This chiropractor ran three seperate ads that were the same except that each had a different headline.
Here were the headlines he used:
Free Report: Are you making these mistakes when treating your migraine headaches?
Free Report: "They all laughed when I called a chiropractor...until my migraine headaches went away.
Free Report: "Who else wants Migraine headache relief?"
Notice that all three are formulas for headlines you've probably seen over and over again. There is a reason for this: all of these formulas are decades old and keep getting re-used because they continue to work better than the new headlines we creative geniuses try to come up with.
Now hopefully you have already watched the video so I am not spoiling the surprise for you, but the winning headline, the headline that generated the highest response and got more requests for the free report, was "They all laughed when I called a chiropractor...until my migraine headaches went away.".
I don't know about you, but that wasn't my first choice... or my second either.
The point is, we are not in the business of predicting what buyers will do, we are in the business of testing what they will do and letting them decide what campaigns we run in the future.
We "professionals" think we know what the public wants, but they fool us again and again. You've read me preach on this site against getting to infatuated with our own creativity, but I did it to. I simply thought, "They all laughed when ..." had been done to death and sounded primative.
Testing isn't for the proud, or the fragile ego (I know mine took a hit on this little exercise). But it does show what will make money, and that, in my book, is the name of the game.
freelance copywriter, ghost writer, web content writer, lawyer marketing, lawyer advertising, white papers
COPYRIGHT © 2008, Charles Brown
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Hey, i would like to suggest an headline testing software, it is generally a copywriting software named "GLYPHIUS"
the uses of it are
It Improves Profitability Using Statistical Analysis To Mathematically Study Profitable Ads.
• It allows you to score your own ad copy against this database for profitability
You just copy/paste a headline, sentence, order link, Adwords ad, resource box or any other copy that is meant to sell into the edit box in Glyphius
Unknown said...
3:28 AM