How to avoid pot luck headlines (Headline writing course part 5)

Posted by Sean D'Souza on 22 April 2010

One headline may work 50 times better than the next. But how do you actually know which headline is really going to work? Shouldn’t you be testing? Oh golly, you should be testing, but what if you had just one shot at sending out a sales letter? How could you make that shot really count? Let’s find why most copywriters goof up, and goof up consistently.

This is part 5 of an 9-part series on writing perfect headlines by the author of "The Secret Life of Testimonials." Find out more about the book and order "The Secret Life of Testimonials" now. Further 'lessons' will be published over the next four weeks.

Ask any copywriter how many headlines they write for a single sales letter or ad, and they’ll come up with a fanciful number.

Something like 75 headlines.
Or 150 headlines.
Or worse, 200 headlines.

So pray, why would you need to write 200 headlines?

I’ll tell you why. You need to write 200 headlines, because you don’t have a clue who your audience really is. Ooh, did I say audience? I didn’t mean to say audience. Because when you start to think of your customer as an audience, you’ve already mucked up your headline writing.

Because the concept of target audience is a myth

And yet, every single day a discussion between copywriters and clients goes like this:
The writer (stupidly) asks, “Who’s your target audience?” And the client (stupidly) says: “Mothers who juggle home with a growing business.”

And then (stupidly), they go about merrily writing headlines for ‘young mothers who juggle home with a growing business.’ And this exercise seems perfectly logical, until you start to slice and dice that so-called audience.

Are we talking about Lisa?

Are we talking about Aditi? Are we talking about Gulnar? Are we talking about Katie? Are we talking about Britney?

Because Britney (as in Britney Spears) is indeed juggling home with a growing (or shall we say, dwindling) business. And so is Lisa. And so is Aditi. Not to speak of Gulnar or Katie.

And when writing that headline they’d all be clumped together

Which of course, is a mistake. Because while they form a tidy demographic of young mothers juggling homes with a growing business, they’re not at all alike.

They don’t exactly have the same problems, and most certainly don’t have the same priorities. And yet, like dumbos, we’re off to write a headline that encompasses the lot. We’re writing for 200 mothers. Is it any wonder we have to write 200 headlines?

Ok, so how do we get to writing a single headline?

We dump the ‘target audience’ concept, that’s for sure. And we look at ‘target profile’ instead. So instead of Lisa, Aditi, and yada, yada, we look at one person. Like Katie.

So instead of looking at every single mother who’d wander into that category, we’d look at just one. And we’d see what’s important to her. What does she want from life? What does she want from her business? And when we start to look at this one person, the fogginess goes away.

Because we’ve stopped looking at this ‘fictional audience’ of nameless, faceless people, and are now concentrating on one person.

A person we know.

A person we can talk to.
A person we can relate to.
And more importantly, a person who can shoot down our headline in a millisecond.

Because we could go to Katie and ask her:

Would Katie take a 20% cut in profits to spend 20% more time with the kids?
Would Katie not tolerate any cut in profit, and still want to spend 20% more with the kids?
Would Katie be quite happy to concentrate on her growing business and grow it by 20%, or even 50%, knowing it will be better for the kids later on?

Aha, now we aren’t tramping around 200 headlines are we?

Because Katie would tell us. She’d tell us what she really wants. And then she’d go so far as to tell us what her specific problems are. And instead of sitting in our nice, fuzzy headline brain, we’d actually be talking to a real person, with real issues, that a million Katies would respond to.

A million Katies?

Yup, uno million! Writing a headline just for Katie seems like marketing suicide, but actually it’s quite the opposite. Because a million mothers with the very same problem will look at your headline and say, “That’s me! This is exactly the service I wanted.”

Weird, huh?

You write for one, but gain the attention of squillions of ‘Katies’. Because while the problem may be universal, the terminology that Katie uses will hit the hot buttons of um, squillions of mothers just like her. And when they see that‘specific product or service’, they’ll instantly realize the ‘specific product or service’ is just what they wanted.

But did you notice I said ‘specific product or service?’

Don’t make the silly mistake of building your entire business around one person. You can only build ONE specific service or product around that person. Why?

Because let’s assume we took Katie into consideration. Let’s assume she chose to spend 20% more time with her darlings, and was quite happy to take the 20% pay cut, as long as the business stayed steady.

Well, the Katie of the year 2007, isn’t the Katie of 2008. And neither is she going to be the Katie of 2009. And we see this with Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computers as well. If you gave Steve an iPod in the year 2002, he’d want a completely different iPod in the year 2005, and quite a different one in 2007.

In effect, Steve Jobs isn’t Steve Jobs

Katie isn’t Katie. And your customer is not the same customer, year after year, after year. Which means you need to sit down with every one of your products. Every one of your services. And allocate specific ‘target profiles’. And these ‘target profiles’ should be real, live people. If you’re writing for Aditi, you should know Aditi. If you’re writing for Gulnar, Gulnar better be around. If you’re creating a product or service for Steve, you’d better be getting Steve’s input.

And then you won’t need 200 headlines

Or 75 headlines. Or whatever. Because ‘Katie’ will tell you exactly what her problem is, and how you can solve it. And that my friend, is the only headline you’re ever going to need.

Exercise: When you’re writing your next ad, brochure or salesletter, pick a person. A real person. Not just any person who’s a figment of your imagination. A person who can sit in the room with you and eat chow mein off your dinner table. That’s the clarity you need. And that’s the person you need to talk to for a few hours. Because they’ll literally write your headline for you, when they speak.

This is part five of an 9-part series on writing perfect headlines by the author of "The Secret Life of Testimonials". Find out more about Sean's book "The Secret Life of Testimonials" and order your copy now.

Read:
Part 1: How to write near-perfect headlines in minutes
Part 2: How too many thoughts ruin headlines
Part 3: How to create intensely powerful headlines
Part 4: Why being specific is critical for headlines
Part 6: How to construct headlines
Part 7: Testimonials as headlines
Part 8: How to make your email signature a headline - and where to use it
Part 9: Round-up of Sean D'Souza's headline writing course