Headlines

A new way to approach copywriting

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I recently started keeping track of every article I click on mindlessly, purely because of an intriguing headline. Here are a few:

* After Years Of Conflict And Instability, Iraq Is Opening Up To Tourism

* A Writing Tip I Learned At Oxford

* A New Way To Approach Wayback Machine

* The New Credible Science Of Longevity Versus The Old Anti-Aging Snake Oil

* Nikola Tesla Invention From 100 Years Ago Suddenly Makes More Sense Today

So I record those headlines, and then I ask myself, Why? Why did I click on this?

If you’re in the business of marketing, I’d like to suggest this new habit to you too.

But why?

Because, as Gary Halbert said, you have to steep yourself in what’s working now. If you’re clicking it, others are clicking it. Pay attention, and you’ll find out what’s working now, both in terms of format (“A New Way To Approach X”) as well as in terms of topics (“Wayback Machine”).

But Gary also said something else. He said you have to ground yourself in the fundamentals of marketing.

That’s why asking why is useful.

Human psychology changes very slowly, if at all, from what I can see. And if you ask yourself why, you’ll get back to a few fundamental answers, over and over and over. And then you can make your own formats, for your own topics, and still have people clicking and reading.

By the way, human psychology changes so slowly that there are some ads that ran a hundred years ago, which could still run successfully today.

If you want to see an example, I’ll share one tomorrow in my email newsletter. And if you want to get on that newsletter so you get to see that ad, here’s where to go.

How to get away with making extreme promises more often than you would ever believe

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In a recent email, A-list copywriter David Deutsch included the following P.S.:

P.S. Justin Goff says working with me enabled him to multiply his income 10 times over.

Not saying I’ll do that for you.

But it does show the power of getting the right kind of help improving your copy.

I call this frontloading. Here’s a second example of it, from an email by Ben Settle:

And it contains the exact same methods I used to land high-paying clients who could have easily afforded to hire better and more seasoned writers. But, using my sneaky ways, they not only hired me… they hired only me (often multiple times, plus referring me to their friends), without doing the usual client-copywriter dance around price, without jumping through hoops to sell myself, and without even showing them my portfolio, in most cases.

I used this info during good and bad economic times.

In fact, I got more high paying clients during the bad times (2008-2010) than the good times.

I cannot guarantee you will have the same results.

And the methodology doesn’t work overnight.

But, that’s how it worked out in my case, and this book shows you what I did.

So those are two examples of frontloading. It works like this:

First, you make a powerful, extreme promise. Then you qualify your promise. That way, you create believability… while still leaving the extreme promise ringing in your prospect’s head.

This works well as a way to organize a single sales argument (as in David’s case above). It can also shape your entire message (as in Ben’s email).

I think of it like grabbing a man by the shoulders and shaking him violently. Once his body goes limp and his head starts to swim, then you let him go and even dust off his shoulders and straighten out his rumpled shirt a bit.

In other words, you agitate and agitate your prospect… and then you agitate some more… and then you ask him to be reasonable.

Of course, you can also choose to be more subtle about it. You can only agitate a little bit, and then immediately get more reasonable. This can work well in your subject lines… or even your headlines.

Anyways, in case you want to get on board the most interesting email newsletter in the world, according to several marketers and copywriters who are subscribed to it, here’s where to go.

How to write “killer copy” in any market… even if… you don’t deserve it!

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Of course you do deserve to write killer copy, right? You read the right books… you hand copy successful sales letters… you listen to what more experienced copywriters have to say.

But let’s say you’re still not getting results. What could be missing?

Here’s a bit of wisdom from the Prince of Print himself, the self-aggrandizing legend, Sir Gary of Halbert.

Gary once wrote a sales letter for a sexy sex guide. A few of the bullets:

* Three sure-fire ways to tell if your spouse or “significant other” has had sex with someone else in the last 24 hours!

* What lesbians know about oral sex which men don’t… and… why more men today are losing their women to other women!

* What (and how) a man can learn about his woman’s masturbation secrets… which will… supercharge HIS sex life!

Intriguing stuff… but the headline is 80% of the sale, right? And that’s what I want to quickly share with you today. Gary’s headline read:

“How To Have “Killer Sex” At Any Age… Even If… You Don’t Deserve It!”

It’s the tail of that headline that caught my eye.

Because if somebody’s a good prospect for your “How to” direct response product… then they’ve almost certainly got feelings of defectiveness and low self-worth. At least as regards that specific problem.

They’ve tried solving the problem before. They haven’t succeeded. They can only take that disgust and frustration in one of two places. Inwards or outwards.

Often it’s inwards.

And if you use that — even just by calling it out, like Gary did in his headline — it could make all the difference. You could be on your way to producing truly killer copy. In any market.

Sounds good?

But maybe you still feel unworthy. Maybe you feel you haven’t done all those things I listed at the top. You can fix that. And quickly. To start, click here and sign up for my daily newsletter, all about copywriting and marketing wisdom.

They promised us violence but when the theater doors opened…

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For the past few days, newspapers around the country have been trying to scare us into seeing the new Joker movie. Here are some of the recent headlines:

“WEEKEND: ‘JOKER’ OPENS AS VIOLENCE FEARS SIMMER…”

“Studio Exec Warned: ‘Don’t Make This Movie’…”

“FBI on alert…”

Maybe I’m jaded, but this feels like a transparent marketing ploy by Hollywood execs.

Because I saw the trailer for the Joker a few nights ago. It didn’t seem interesting or intriguing. Though it did have a reference to the old Bob Monkouse joke:

“They laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well, they’re not laughing now!”

I can’t prove it, but I suspect this joke is itself a reference to a very famous ad headline:

“They laughed when I sat down at the piano but when I started to play!”

This headline has been ripped off, directly and indirectly, in hundreds or thousands of ads.

It’s become one of the great headline archetypes, along with “Do you make these mistakes in English?” and “How to win friends and influence people.”

But what makes the “They laughed” headline so effective?

Well, in just a few words, it starts to tell a story…

It introduces high stakes (nobody likes being humiliated)…

It creates intrigue and curiosity (“What happened when you sat down?”)…

And it implies a benefit (“I bet you showed them!”).

All that in just 15 words. I think that’s more excitement than you’re likely to get in 121 minutes of The Joker.

Anyways, keep the power of the “They laughed” headline in mind when writing simple stories in your marketing materials.

And if you want help in making those stories intriguing and curiosity-pumping, then you can find some specific advice in the following book on copywriting for advertorials:

https://bejakovic.com/advertorials/