When Straight Benefit Headlines Don’t Work

About every copywriter will tell you that your headline should shout your strongest benefit to your prospect. And there are many famous headlines that have done this very successfully. For example, here are just a few that comes to mind:

“Shrink Hemorrhoids Without Surgery”

“The Lazy Man’s Way To Riches”

“How To Win Friends And Influence People”

“Lose 30 pounds in less than one week!”

All of these headlines share one thing in common - they promise the prospect a direct benefit. But when will such a headline NOT work its magic?

The answer to this question has to do with what Eugene Schwartz called “market sophistication”. This could best be illustrated if we look at a practical example.

Now let’s say you were to discover a perfect and safe diet that was the answer to every obese person in the USA. If you introduce your diet to the market by using a headline such as:

“Miracle Diet Helps You Melt Fat Overnight!”

An overweight person would read this headline with a lot of skepticism. I mean, how
many of these claims have you seen before. Because the weight-loss industry is so filled with diets that have failed, then even if your diet is the long awaited miracle you’ll have a hard time marketing this with such headline.

So what should you do instead? What’s left if not a strong benefit headline?

In this case you’ll have to tap into the general FRUSTRATION that your prospects have with diets that they’ve tried and failed at. In other words, your headline has to REFLECT the deepest feelings of
the market towards diet products. You, as the marketer must be seen as their advocate and tap into this general feeling of discontent.

So instead of your headline promising some great benefit it would simply reflect the thoughts that are already in your reader’s mind. And that’s the best place to start any sales message–with a “YES” from your potential customer. Keep in mind that your headline has only one function and that is to stop your prospects and get them to read the first line of the sales letter. That’s it.

So a better headline for your new miracle diet would better be:

“Frustrated By All Those Snake Oil Diets?”

“Still Overweight After Trying Every Fad Diet Program?”

These headlines all tap into a general dissatisfaction in your target market. You are using this resentment to
capture your prospect’s attention and then sell him your solution, which of course works.

So if you are in a market that is pretty ’sophisticated’ because it has seen every type of advertising promise made, then try to use this “reflective dissatisfaction” to get your target customer on your side.

Please note that you don’t have this problem if your product is a new breakthrough product in a new market area. In that case use those benefit loaded headlines to your heart’s content. But if your market has been mined for every nugget of gold and your competition numbers like the sand on the sea shore, those big benefit headlines will arrest little attention.

Keep in mind that when writing such headlines you are not promising, selling or satisfying anything. You are simply the backboard against which the ball of your market’s emotions is rebounded.

Ray L. Edwards is a master copywriter, published author and Internet Marketing Consultant. His copywriting clients have claimed up to 1,600% increase in their comversion rates just from using his services. Get more tips at Copywriting Tips

Article Source: http://www.marketingarticlelibrary.com

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