If you're struggling with the results of your campaign or maybe growing your email list, you're not quite sure what you're doing wrong. For some reason, your copy is just not converting well. You think maybe it's the audience, you think maybe it's your messaging, you're not sure. Well, today we're going to focus on one area that could possibly increase your conversion by 80%. And it has to do with copy, but we're going to keep it really simple today on episode 19: how to write winning headlines that increase results. Welcome. I'm Marissa Shatterick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm a digital strategist and certified copywriter, but more importantly, a woman of faith. In this podcast, you'll find a biblical perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we let our faith shape our work to create positive change online. To connect with our private Facebook group of faith-based online entrepreneurs, go to MarissaShepard.com forward slash faith. It almost seems insignificant, but yet a good headline could increase the success of a sales page by 80%. Did you know that? I found that kind of shocking, but that's the latest statistic. And yet sometimes we work on all the other stuff, you know, trying to cram in all the features, all the modules, everything. We're gonna provide stuff, stuff, stuff. And we don't put enough attention on the headlines and the subheads because after all, there's only a few seconds to catch someone's attention when you're online. So the headline does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. So, really, if we put more focus on the headlines and the subheads, we could possibly catch someone's attention long enough to get them to read the rest of the copy. So, right now I'm going to kind of explain the difference between copywriting and copyright because someone had asked me that what's the difference? So let's clarify first copyright, which is spelt C-O-P-Y-R-I-G-H-T. Copyright is recognizing the ownership of original work. So that is different than copywriting. Uh, copyright is a way of protecting original content that was created by someone, whether it was a book or a song or art and so forth. But copywriting is really the skill of writing persuasive words in order to catch people's attention, in order to get someone to click or to buy something. And of course, you need to have a strategy, you need to have your target market. When you know all these things and you begin to write the copy for them, it's important to not just rely on the fact that you're targeting your ideal audience. Because even in a situation, if you had a room full, uh say it was 50 people in a workshop and they were your ideal audience, would you be able to phrase what you want to offer them, whether it was a free offer or whether it was something to buy, would you able to phrase it in a way that they would get the big idea and understand the benefit, even if the benefit was just implied? It's really important to be succinct because online you do only have a few seconds to catch someone's attention. They're ready to scroll, they're ready to click out, they're ready to look at the next thing. And so headlines play a big important role. When I write copy, I spend a lot of time first on the research and then on the headlines before I even start to write the copy. Really, really important. I wanted to share some quotes from some copywriters that are famous copywriters and great copywriters with great wisdom. So these uh next three quotes are from Claude Hopkins from the book Scientific Advertising. And this is what he says about headlines. The purpose of a headline is to pick out people that you can interest. You wish to talk to someone in a crowd. So it sounds very personal, doesn't it? You're trying to speak to someone who's in the crowd. Doesn't that resonate? I mean, we often think that we're a small little voice on the big worldwide web and there's no way we can catch someone's attention, and yet he says the headline is to pick those people out, to really talk to someone that is in the crowd. Here's another quote from him speak in your prospect's language. Speak in your prospects language. Well, how do we know their language? That comes with a lot of research, of really understanding the market, of surveying them, of asking a lot of open-ended questions, even after you sell something, doing a kind of a feedback on what they think of the product, getting a lot of that intel from them. That's how you learn what their language is. And sometimes it takes time to do that, but there is research that you can do ahead of time to kind of get a feel as to what people are saying about that particular challenge or that particular goal they have that they're trying to find a solution. So his quote says, speak in your prospect's language. Oftentimes, copywriters they try to write in their clients' voice, um, or they write sometimes for their own products and they're in their own voice, which is fine, but you need to blend that with words that come directly from your market. So you it can have the personality of the person offering the product, but you really want to use the prospect's language. It's voice of customers so that they can see themselves when they see that headline. They see that and all of a sudden it catches their attention because it's the way they phrase things, not the way you phrase it or your customers that want you to write copy phrase it. It's the way people phrase it. And often it's simple language. The next quote is offer a solution to a problem, make a promise, prove you can deliver. This is all in headlines. This is what Claude Hopkins is saying. Offer a solution to a problem, or make a promise, or prove you can deliver. Now, when we hear a lot of these things, oftentimes what happens is people try to cram all these elements in a headline and they get really wordy and really heavy. It's really sometimes implied what the solution is. It's not always having every piece of element in a headline, but you do want to have the big idea. You do want them to know what this is about in the headline. So when we think of a headline, we definitely have to have the audience in mind and use their language because we want to grab their attention, but we also want to see how we're gonna craft it to be able to let them know what the big idea is and how we're gonna help them with this challenge and give them the positive outcome that they want. So that's a lot to do. So I'm gonna give you a few little tips to help you out here. And I had shared some of these quotes from Eugene Schwartz before, but I think I'm gonna repeat it in this podcast as far as audience awareness and your headlines and the things that you're trying to say in a short amount of time. He says this if your prospect is aware of your product and has realized it can satisfy his desires, our headline starts with the product. So this is interesting. If they're already aware it starts with the product, I'll give you an example. Uh, when I had injured my shoulder on a slip and slide out in the backyard, uh right in the middle of COVID, we had lockdown, we had cabin fever, we put a slip and slide out there, and I thought I would just go ahead and play outside, and I threw myself down and it just messed up my shoulder. But in any event, I was doing physical therapy for it, trying to nurture my shoulder. My physical therapy asked me a lot of questions about my workspace and my desk and how uh I everything was set up and the size of the keyboard. And was it really long? And was my arm kind of hanging and not resting on the desk or on the chair? And it was really long. It was a long keyboard. And he says, you need to have a shorter one, and that way you can rest your elbow on the arm of the chair, and it's gonna help take the pressure off of your shoulder and heel faster. So I was aware of the product that I needed. I needed a new keyboard, right? So I'm looking for keyboards, I'm already aware, and this is what he's saying, Eugene Schwartz. If your prospect is aware of your product and has realized it can satisfy his desire, our headline starts with a product. So, in search of a keyboard, I found a smaller one, and that's what I was looking for, a smaller keyboard. Now, this is the interesting part. The headline that caught my attention, it was a Logitech shorter keyboard, but the feature of it was different. It was unique because it had three buttons. If I push the first button, I can use it with my desktop. If I push the second button, I could use it with my iPad. And if I push the third button, I could use it with my phone. And I thought this is great. This is what made this product unique and different and stand out because it had those features that I could use the same keyboard on three different devices. One small keyboard that was going to help me heal my shoulder when I was working on the desktop, but also use it when I was on my iPad or my phone. So I was very much aware of the product that I wanted. And of course, when I searched for keyboards, I was looking for any headlines that had keyboard in it, and I needed a small one. And so it the headlines started with the product. Otherwise, you know, I wouldn't have found this. And so it's interesting when he says as we do this all the time when we're buying things, but we don't realize it. The next quote he's got about headlines is he says, if the prospect or if he or she is not aware of the product, but only of the desire itself, the headline starts with a desire. I'll give you another example of this. I like to walk and I like to watch what I eat, and I'm very conscious about sleep. And I I would love to know how I'm doing and be able to gauge and see where I need to improve on my health. It's just something that I do. And throughout the years, there's an app for this and there's an app for that. And you just get tired of going to different apps. And I finally was thinking, I wish there was just one place I can go where I could track everything and well, almost everything, and pretty much be able to gauge how I'm doing as far as water intake and so forth and movement exercise. Well, I had the desire. I was not aware of what I could buy, but I had the desire. So when the headline starts with desire and it says something like monitor your health goals all in one place, oh my gosh, that's for me, right? And I found my solution with a Fitbit. So I wear this Fitbit watch and it allows me to track how much exercise I get. It helps me see as far as sleep and recovery, how much sleep I'm getting and rates it. It shows water intake, it shows a lot of different things. My heart rate has all kinds of things all in one. And I absolutely love it. And not only that, but it's got the weather on it and it's got also a connection to music, it's got the Starbucks app on it, it's got so many things in it that I had the desire, I didn't know what it was that I wanted to buy. And so this is what Eugene Schwartz is talking about that if the customer, potential customer is not aware of the product, but has a desire, you want to start with that desire. The third quote from him is if the customer or potential customer, he or she is not yet aware of what he seeks, but is concerned with the general problem. There's a general problem. Your headline starts with the problem and crystallized into a specific need. So this is where someone is not yet aware, but has a general problem, you start with that problem. So an example of this would be copywriting. If your copy is not doing what it's supposed to do, you're aware of the problem and you're wondering, well, I don't know how I'm gonna fix it. I guess I'll try to do better. And then all of a sudden you see something, a book or something that's gonna help you improve on copy, especially for people that are not writers or certified copywriters, it's gonna interest you. So you see how Eugene Schwartz is saying that being aware of the prospect, being aware of them and really understanding, because people say understand your target market. And they say that so often that we kind of gloss over it and we forget about how deep we need to go to really understand our audience, because we want to be able to captivate them with the headlines so they will read on to the next thing because we only have a few seconds. Now remember, a good crafted headline can increase your success on a sales page by 80%. That's huge. The other thing you got to keep in mind is you want to keep it very conversational and use simple words and don't get really, really wordy either. The wordier it gets, the harder it is for someone to understand at a glance what you're talking about because there's too much to read. So a good thing to do is to read it out loud, but look at the words that you're using to craft your headline and see if there's a simpler way of saying it, protecting the big idea. So for example, if you say as a result of, just use the word because. If you say something like pertaining to, use the word about. If you say whether or not, just say whether. If you say reach a conclusion, just say decide. Make use of, just say use. Or is it's often the case, just often, you want to find simpler words to replace wordiness. And you can use contractions. You want to be able to communicate in a way as if someone is sitting across the kitchen table and you're just explaining something in a succinct way to a friend. You want to help a friend and you want to let them know how this product or service is going to help them reach a goal or solve a problem. And you're trying to put it in a very simple way in a headline. And the problem is I think people just want to sound smart or they want to get clever and it gets confusing, and people will just leave. They will not read on. And the job of the headline is really to get them to stop scrolling, to stop and read the rest of it, create enough at least curiosity. You'll have the big idea. Maybe they don't know what the solution is yet, but there's enough curiosity for them to be able to scroll down and read the rest. So when we think of the big idea, I'm gonna read some headlines that I found in an online swipe file. Um, and I'll give you what that URL is so you can take a look at it. And they've got some great headlines there. But I want you to just grasp the idea of really being able to share the big idea in a headline because I've seen a lot of headlines where I don't know what it is that they do, and nobody's gonna resonate with that, nobody's gonna want to read on because they don't know what it's about. It's saying a lot of things because people start thinking of the product and they start thinking of the features, or they start thinking for a clever name, and they're missing the point that it really has to be around that big idea. In fact, your whole sales page needs to be about that big idea. So, in a headline that reads very simply, free book reveals how to create internet campaigns that sell. You look at it and you think, what is the big idea? The big idea is the internet campaigns, right? And so does it say who the audience is? No, but it is implied because someone who is marketing online would be interested in campaigns at sell. So, in that, there is the big idea. Another example would be boost your retirement income with three simple tricks. You've got to realize if I want to attract the right audience, what is the big idea that will attract the right audience? And right there and boost your retirement income with three simple tricks. Retirement income is drawing, attracting that older generation that would be interested in that. You see how the headline can really speak to one person in the crowd simply by crafting it and really focusing on that big idea. Um, I'll give you one more. Here's another one that says, How to make your sales promotions more profitable? You can see what the big idea is. It's about sales promotion, and they're going to give some type of solution and show you how to make it more profitable. So who would be interested in that? Right? It really does speak to a target audience, even though it doesn't say it in the headline. So hopefully that's clear. It really is important to use visceral words and that really pop and give it color so that it will draw people. Here are some examples of attention grabbers when you say something like top-rated or genuine or powerful or introducing or exclusive or breakthrough or even boost, you know, you use these colorful words with the big idea. Sometimes it even says what the benefit is right in the headline. But as you can see from some of the examples, it doesn't have to. So really, when you're thinking about writing anything, you want to make sure that the headline is going to speak to the right audience. Otherwise, it's just going to be text in the midst of a bunch of text. So you want to make sure that it doesn't have to be salesy, it just has to be clear. That's the difference. It doesn't have to be salesy, it just has to be clear. Here's the site where I got some of those headlines, and you can check it out. It's uh you just type in swiped.co, swi-p-ed-d dot co and they'll give you all kinds of headline examples, sales page examples. They're written by people that wrote a really successful copy, and so they've archived it in the swipe file so people can look at it, study it, read it, see what made it a winning uh sales page or a winning headline, and you can learn a lot by just looking at those. I'm going to end with this quote by uh Blair Warren. Um, it's really powerful, so I want to share this with you. It says, People will do anything for those who encourage their dreams, justify their failures, allay their fears, confirm their suspicions, and help them throw rocks at their enemies. So it's all about connection. It's all about connecting human to human and really thinking first when you're thinking about your sales campaign or whatever it might be, if it didn't go the way you wanted it to, if it didn't have the results that you wanted, don't look at it as a failure of the product you're offering. I'm sure it's probably amazing whatever you're offering, the service or the product or the course, but take a look at the audience. And are you really resonating with that audience? Are you speaking their language? Are you connecting with them human to human? And maybe that will be the only adjustment you need to make when you launch it again is really focusing on that headline and making sure it's clear. And when you craft a lot of headlines, you'll have plenty that you can tweak and edit that you can use for subheads that will really make the page pop. So I hope that was helpful. I know it's hard to kind of listen and imagine these headlines, but it really is a matter of holding on to that big idea and using their language, making it conversational. In fact, copywriting it needs to be no higher than eighth grade level. It needs to be somewhere between fifth to eighth grade level. And you can use tools, even the Word doc, when you're actually going through and going through the editing process and checking for spelling and so forth, it will give you a rating for it. The Flesh Kincaid provides that readability score, and you want to make sure that it is below eighth grade level because the idea is the lower the grade level, if it's fifth grade level, it's more conversational, therefore it's more believable. And that's the idea behind that. You can also use a tool like Hemingway, you can use Grammarly. Um, I use all of them, I love them all, and when I really need to comb through something, I'll use them all. But that there's the importance of it is making sure that the grade level is low enough because that means it's going to be easy to read, and that means that it's going to be more engaging and it's going to be more believable and there's going to be more trust. So there's a lot to headlines. So if you're frustrated because maybe you didn't get the outcome that you wanted, think about tweaking the headlines, and maybe that's all you need to do. So until next time, take care and I'll talk to you soon. If you found this podcast helpful, then subscribe from wherever you're listening today so you never miss an episode. Every subscription, review, or rating means so much to me. So keep them coming and share this with a friend. For more free content, go to marissashadrick.com and remember keep cultivating resilient faith online to create positive change in the world.