Let’s tell you exactly what not to do to be a rock-solid and razor-sharp headline writer. This is going to come in so handy. 

Heard a story from my mentor. He started as a real estate agent doing his marketing and got horribly bad results.

So, he was new to the game having a business degree background and wanting to crush it.

One day his boss said they’d run an online ad so we need to write an ad copy. My mentor, Arno, stood up and said: I can do it. Give me the job.

The boss said ok.

He had no clue what to do at first other than things he learned in business school.

He did everything he picked up in business school, wrote an ad copy, and delivered it to the boss.

A few weeks went by and he hadn’t heard anything about the ad results.

He asked the boss saying: ‘Hey, what happened with the ad we started running? Any results?’

He said: ‘No, no results yet’. And my Arno started explaining himself saying: ‘I don’t get it. I did everything right so wrote a decent copy. We should’ve had something by now.

The boss: ‘No no, Arno. It doesn’t matter because the purpose of an ad is brand recognition.’

Arno: ‘Brand recognition?’

The boss: ‘Exactly’.

Then he thought this was absolute bullshit.

He thought he’d go bankrupt with this if it was his own business. Couldn’t figure out what he was doing wrong.

Then, he did the best next thing. He repeated the same stuff the competitors did and offered the boss to run another ad with the new copy.

Results? Almost no conversion. Turns out the competitors also knew fuck all about marketing.

One day, his mentor, the big boss, lighted a cigar in the office and asked him: ’How’s it going with the ad?’ 

Arno:’Well, copied and pasted everything from my business degree knowledge and what competitors do but no results still’

His mentor, an old grizzled veteran by the way, told him to stop the fancy bullshit and just talk like a human being, be direct, concise, and tell people how you’ll solve their problem.

The next day, Arno wrote another copy and this time he ran the ad himself. And the leads started raining from the sky.

He couldn’t believe the sharp switch from nothing to a lead pool.

He realized later on that he had made every mistake he possibly could. And they were mostly about the headline.

1. Missing the benefits

2. Not being compelling

3. Being too vague

4. Imitating the competitors’ horrendous ads

5. Overusing buzzwords

6. Targeting everyone

The moment people see your headline, they must say, ‘That’s me. This person understands me’ and from there on out, the rest is up to your body copy.

If you don’t hook them in immediately, it doesn’t matter how decent your copy is. They won’t read it anyway.

So, be direct, keep it nice and simple, don’t be vague, don’t give away in the first place either, and make sure the target audience understands what you’re talking about.

Talk soon,

Erkam

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