start your business
So, how do you start - because starting is the hardest part! Here's 13 tips from master headline writer, Robert Boduch:
1.Prepare first. Do your research. Begin by identifying 5 key elements: your target market… what product or service you’re promoting… the biggest benefits your product or service offers… your prospect’s major frustration… and what special inducements you could use to encourage more interest.
2.Learn all you can about your audience. Understand why this audience will be interested in what you have to offer. Ask yourself, “What’s the single, most compelling reason a prospect should choose me, my product or service vs. the competition?” Determine the best medium to reach prospects and uncover the strongest, most compelling promise you can make about your product or service.
3.Empathize with your target market. Begin from the mindset of a typical prospect. Get inside his or her mind. Communicate from a solid understanding of your prospect’s thoughts and feelings of the moment. Empathy removes the barriers and shortens the distance between you and your market. Empathy builds rapport. Your ability to come from an understanding of your reader’s point of view, gives you an advantage and makes you a likely candidate for the prospect’s attention, interest, and business.
4.Investigate all aspects of the product or service thoroughly. Look at it in different ways and from unique perspectives. Often potentially explosive, fresh, headline material lies hidden-- just waiting to be discovered.
5.Assess the competitive environment before constructing your headline. Create a headline that’s likely to contrast with all others vying for the same audience. If all competing messages are screaming loudly for attention, take an opposite approach and whisper. Find an unusual edge, a unique angle that you can ethically exploit and turn into promotional firepower. Find something competitors aren’t using that you can boast about.
6.Consider possible barriers, objections or marketplace challenges and provide a solid answer. What obstacles does your headline have to overcome? Is there a major hurdle or misconception to clear about your industry, company, product or service?
7.Launch your headline project with a blank pad of paper and a list of key words related to your business, audience, product, services and the unique advantages that set you apart. Next, try writing a straightforward claim about how the prospect will gain from whatever it is you’re offering.
8.Envision your typical prospect as you write your headline. Create a composite of the type of individual you want to address and keep this image in the back of your mind. This strategy will help you develop a headline with reader-appeal – one that enables the prospect to imagine himself getting the same kind of results your headline promises.
9.Think about some of the other factors that are important to your prospect. Then hint at a secret-- that special something about your raw materials, ingredients, processes, sources, or methods that would most impress your target audience.
10.Invest plenty of time into headline development. Examine several possibilities. Try different word combinations. Experiment. Be prepared to rewrite and revise. Eventually you’ll evolve a potent collection of words that will work well as a headline.
11.Discover a problem that your product or service addresses effectively and then present your solution as an easier, faster, less expensive, or more comfortable alternative. Reach out to your prospects with a better option.
12.Talk to your existing customers. Get to know them. Find out the underlying reasons why they bought from you. This will help you make the right emotional connection with new prospective customers—the kind of connection you want to establish with your headline.
13.Collect headlines that capture your eye or attract your interest and save them. Study successful headlines from the past and write out several of these by hand, before attempting to write your own headline. This technique gives you the unique viewpoint of the original writer. Warm-up with this little exercise and you’ll be giving yourself a definite advantage from the start.
And here's two more from me:
14.Use one of the following in a headline:
* Ask "HOW?" or "WHY?"
* Offer a key BENEFIT
* Offer a CHALLENGE
* Make it BIG
* Make it RELEVANT (both to the reader and to the rest of the copy
* Name a PRICE
15.Use one or more of these three attention-grabbing words:
* NEW
* NOW
* FREE
Getting Inspiration
Point 13, above, is a great way to get inspiration, but it can take time to collect all those great headlines.
Fortunately, there is a short-cut way provided by a great bit of software called "Headline Creater Pro". It's based on a "swipe file" of some of the most successful headlines ever created. You simply answer 4 simple questions about your product or service, click a button, and you are immediately presented with a selection of ready-to-copy killer headlines, ready to drop into your sales page, advert or sales letter.
What's more, it is very affordable! You can get full details in this section of this report.
Then.. read on.. How To Edit
This report is© 2007 Traynor Kitching & Associates ("TKA"), York, UK. You are granted a licence to distribute this report however you wish, provided that none of the material is changed. TKA accepts no responsibility for how you use this material, which is for educational purposes only. No guarantees are intended or implied.
1.Prepare first. Do your research. Begin by identifying 5 key elements: your target market… what product or service you’re promoting… the biggest benefits your product or service offers… your prospect’s major frustration… and what special inducements you could use to encourage more interest.
2.Learn all you can about your audience. Understand why this audience will be interested in what you have to offer. Ask yourself, “What’s the single, most compelling reason a prospect should choose me, my product or service vs. the competition?” Determine the best medium to reach prospects and uncover the strongest, most compelling promise you can make about your product or service.
3.Empathize with your target market. Begin from the mindset of a typical prospect. Get inside his or her mind. Communicate from a solid understanding of your prospect’s thoughts and feelings of the moment. Empathy removes the barriers and shortens the distance between you and your market. Empathy builds rapport. Your ability to come from an understanding of your reader’s point of view, gives you an advantage and makes you a likely candidate for the prospect’s attention, interest, and business.
4.Investigate all aspects of the product or service thoroughly. Look at it in different ways and from unique perspectives. Often potentially explosive, fresh, headline material lies hidden-- just waiting to be discovered.
5.Assess the competitive environment before constructing your headline. Create a headline that’s likely to contrast with all others vying for the same audience. If all competing messages are screaming loudly for attention, take an opposite approach and whisper. Find an unusual edge, a unique angle that you can ethically exploit and turn into promotional firepower. Find something competitors aren’t using that you can boast about.
6.Consider possible barriers, objections or marketplace challenges and provide a solid answer. What obstacles does your headline have to overcome? Is there a major hurdle or misconception to clear about your industry, company, product or service?
7.Launch your headline project with a blank pad of paper and a list of key words related to your business, audience, product, services and the unique advantages that set you apart. Next, try writing a straightforward claim about how the prospect will gain from whatever it is you’re offering.
8.Envision your typical prospect as you write your headline. Create a composite of the type of individual you want to address and keep this image in the back of your mind. This strategy will help you develop a headline with reader-appeal – one that enables the prospect to imagine himself getting the same kind of results your headline promises.
9.Think about some of the other factors that are important to your prospect. Then hint at a secret-- that special something about your raw materials, ingredients, processes, sources, or methods that would most impress your target audience.
10.Invest plenty of time into headline development. Examine several possibilities. Try different word combinations. Experiment. Be prepared to rewrite and revise. Eventually you’ll evolve a potent collection of words that will work well as a headline.
11.Discover a problem that your product or service addresses effectively and then present your solution as an easier, faster, less expensive, or more comfortable alternative. Reach out to your prospects with a better option.
12.Talk to your existing customers. Get to know them. Find out the underlying reasons why they bought from you. This will help you make the right emotional connection with new prospective customers—the kind of connection you want to establish with your headline.
13.Collect headlines that capture your eye or attract your interest and save them. Study successful headlines from the past and write out several of these by hand, before attempting to write your own headline. This technique gives you the unique viewpoint of the original writer. Warm-up with this little exercise and you’ll be giving yourself a definite advantage from the start.
And here's two more from me:
14.Use one of the following in a headline:
* Ask "HOW?" or "WHY?"
* Offer a key BENEFIT
* Offer a CHALLENGE
* Make it BIG
* Make it RELEVANT (both to the reader and to the rest of the copy
* Name a PRICE
15.Use one or more of these three attention-grabbing words:
* NEW
* NOW
* FREE
Getting Inspiration
Point 13, above, is a great way to get inspiration, but it can take time to collect all those great headlines.
Fortunately, there is a short-cut way provided by a great bit of software called "Headline Creater Pro". It's based on a "swipe file" of some of the most successful headlines ever created. You simply answer 4 simple questions about your product or service, click a button, and you are immediately presented with a selection of ready-to-copy killer headlines, ready to drop into your sales page, advert or sales letter.
What's more, it is very affordable! You can get full details in this section of this report.
Then.. read on.. How To Edit
This report is© 2007 Traynor Kitching & Associates ("TKA"), York, UK. You are granted a licence to distribute this report however you wish, provided that none of the material is changed. TKA accepts no responsibility for how you use this material, which is for educational purposes only. No guarantees are intended or implied.