Personalizing your headlines to your target audience can
significantly improve your sales response. You can do this by
mentioning a person by name, their city, their career field,
their job title, or group right in the headline. You will find
this has become quite common in email marketing.
If you can make the person feel that you are talking directly to
them you will normally win their trust which will in turn lead to
a sale.
So, rather than trying to hit the broadest audience possible by
making the headline of your sales letters, ads, or emails
generic, break the group down into small niches and address each
niche individually. This does not need to create a lot of extra
work, many times it only requires changing the name of the group
in the headline of your letter or ad. This can be accomplished
easily with word processing or mail merge tools.
Some headline examples include (simply replace the square
brackets and enclosed words with your target audience):
[firstname], Have you seen this yet? {for email}
Attention [Small Business Owners]! Here's How To INSTANTLY Get
All The Customers You'll Ever Want! Discover The Little Known
Secrets Of Getting More Customers In A Month Than You Now Get All
Year…That Your Ad Agency Will Never Tell You! {headline for a
classified ad or sales letter - simply change the target market
for your niche market and change 'Customers' to Clients,
Patients, Recur its, Prospects, Leads, etc. to fit your target
audience.}
Attention [Internet Marketers]! 'Is Your Marketing Being Attacked
By Time Sucking Vampires?'
'Getting Ready To [Retire]? Hot Tips For Those About To
[Retire]!' {For a travel agency this could read, 'Getting Ready
To Travel? Hot Tips For Travelers!'
...or for a tighter niche market, within the travel industry, how
about, 'Getting Ready To Travel Overseas? Hot Tip For Overseas
Travelers!'
...or lets focus on vacation travelers with the following,
'Looking For That Great Vacation Spot? Hot Tips On The 10 Best
Places To Spend Your Vacation This Year!'}
...or how about this one from the cover of Reader's Digest: 'Got
Back Pain? New Cures'
Each of these headlines, personalizes the message to a specific
person or group. When your reader scans the headline, if they
recognize their name or a group to which they belong, they will
stop and read more of what you have to say, because it applies to
them.
For those who are not members of the target group, they will just
move on, but that's OK, they were not going to buy whatever you
had to offer anyway. So by filtering out those who are just
passing through, you can more accurately target your message to,
and get the attention of, those most likely to respond to your
call to action, whatever that may be.
The tighter match your headline message has to your audience, the
better will be your response.
About the Author
George Dodge has worked on the Internet since 1994 developing,
and serving as webmaster for, numerous government and commercial
websites. One of his commercial sites focusing on headline
copywriting is
www.Headline-Creator-Pro.com where you can get your copy of a
headline generating tool that enables you to create winning
headlines quickly with push button ease.