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My friend David Garfinkel is a copywriting genius. He is
allowing me to share his ideas with you. Enjoy,
think and prosper.
—Patricia Fripp
by David Garfinkel
Want a little secret to turn your advertising into an
irresistible magnet for customers?
Dale
Carnegie knew the secret, and that's one reason his book
How to Win Friends and Influence People has
sold more than 15 million copies. In fact, British
Airways recently named it "The Business Book of the
20th Century."
It's a great book. But if Dale had
titled it "How to Remember People's Names and
Curb Your Incessant Urge to Argue", do you think it
would have sold as well? Probably not. There's great
power in good titles. What you may not realize is
the words "How to Win Friends and Influence People"
are not only the title of the book. Those words were also
the headline of a mail-order ad, which sold the
book. The ad ran successfully for many years and
sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
So what does
this have to do with turning your advertising into an
irresistible customer magnet?
Here's what.
Behind the title and headline is a "secret code" that makes
it powerful. Dale knew it. Great advertising
copywriters know it. And now, you're going to know
it, too.
The "secret code" is actually a generic
formula that gets attention and creates desire in
your prospect's mind. Every winning headline has a
unique generic formula hidden inside. Here's the formula in
Dale Carnegie's book title and headline:
How to _____ and _____.
Let's see the formula at
work. Say you are an executive recruiter, and you
help companies find new executives. In reality, your biggest
problem is finding the executive candidates in the
first place. So, to increase your group of
candidates, you decide to run an ad in your local business
journal. Here's how you could use this formula to
write a headline for your ad:
How to Get a
Better Job and Make More Money
... and right after
reading that headline, anyone who's even a little
interested would want to read your ad immediately. Then, if
your copy (text) is even halfway decent, you'd get
plenty of calls. Or, let's say you run a martial
arts school. Here's how you could apply the formula
in an advertising headline to get you new students:
How to Stay Fit and Protect Yourself
Do you
see how powerful that is? You've just zeroed-in on people
who are likely to be interested in learning martial
arts.
The brutal reality of advertising: An ad
with a good headline and even mediocre copy will get
you a response and generate sales. But with a poor
headline, even the most brilliant copy will get you little
or no response. Why? Because without a good headline
to get their attention, most people won't read any
further.
The good news is, once you have
identified a good headline that works in one
industry or market, you can adapt it (like we did with the
Dale Carnegie headline, above) for your own
business. Great headlines work as subject lines in
emails, titles on Web pages, and of course as headlines
in print ads and sales letters. Great headlines will
literally transform your sales.
How does
this work in today's economy?
Recently a client
asked me to help him introduce a new service to Internet
Service Providers. (Note: To understand what you are
about to read, you should know that ISPs call their
suppliers "backbone providers.") I wrote a direct
mail letter and my client sent it out to ISPs. Because my
client was revealing new information his prospects
hadn't heard before, we used the following "teaser
headline" on the front of the envelope:
What Your
Backbone Provider Isn't Telling You
Was this an
entirely original headline? No. I had seen a similar "teaser
headline" on a successful mailing to promote an
investment newsletter:
What Your Broker Isn't
Telling You About High-Tech Stocks
So I merely
identified the "secret code" in the original winning
headline, and applied it to my client's market,
ISPs.
The response to the mailing was
overwhelming! Nearly 10% of the entire ISP industry
responded to our letter and my client has added eight
figures of new annual revenues as a result of the
business that developed.
I'm telling you this not
to brag, but to point out the awesome power of good
headlines. While many people spend hours and hours trying to
come up with "the perfect headline" for their ads,
there is an easier way. Find proven headlines that
already work for another business in another
industry, and adapt them to your business.
Then
prepare for a flood of new customers!
(798 words)
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