With all your emails, content, and everything else that you’re putting out there to the world.
What better time to talk about headlines and subject lines.
When you’ve read something. When something grabs your attention.
What is it that makes you continue to read it?
When the subject line or headline is generic or boring, if it’s something that makes you think twice about, you don’t read it.
If it doesn’t interest you. You WON’T read it.
But when a subject line or a headline grabs your attention…you keep reading.
That is the job of your subject line or your headline, whether it’s an email subject line, whether it’s a blog post headline, whether it’s a newsletter headline.
You’re writing those headlines to grab your reader’s attention and keep them reading down the page.
Resources
Breakthrough Advertising – Gene Schwartz
Justin Blackman – The Headline Project – 100 headlines in 100 days
Jay Abraham – The 100 Greatest Headlines Ever Written
Transcript (unedited)
Emails and content and everything else that’s going to be put out there to the world. So what better time then to talk about headlines and subject lines. So that’s what I’m talking about today, when it comes to headlines in subject lines.
So think of it this way, when you’ve read something, or something grabs your attention, what is it that makes you continue to read it?
If the subject line or headline is generic or boring, or it’s something that you think twice about, what do you do, you vote, you don’t read it.
If it doesn’t interest you, if it’s not along the lines of what you’re looking for, you’re going to go, so you know, I’m going to go on to something else.
But when a subject line or a headline grabs your attention, then you keep reading.
And that is the job of your subject line or your headline, whether it’s an email subject line, whether it’s a blog post headline, whether it’s a newsletter, headline, whatever it is, you’re writing, those headlines are meant to grab attention.
So we’re talking about that today, and how to really write those subject lines and headlines that pop because we really want them to pop out at our reader.
And because email inboxes are so full of so much content, you know, think about what you can write that’s going to stand out.
And when we talk about subject lines and headlines, one of the things I want you to do is go in your inbox, not from what you’re writing, but go in your inbox, and look at all those headlines.
So subject lines that are there, and find out which ones are interesting to you, which ones stand out. Because what we’re going to talk about today, and your subject lines and headlines is, you’ll know when you read something, it grabs your attention, does that product or service?
Do they know you? Do they have your best interest at heart? Do they understand your pains, your problems, your desires, or whatever?
And are they writing those headlines and subject lines that get your attention, you need to do the same thing for your readers is you need to write something that’s really going to capture their attention. And from that, then they keep reading your stuffs.
So what we’re going to talk about today is really getting those that pop.
Now I have this now you guys will not read it because you’re not you don’t need it because you’re not going into the copywriting field. But this book breakthrough advertising has been a huge by Eugene Schwartz, a huge as far as helping educate me, for our one reader and market sophistication and things like that.
So I’m going to be using some of that for you guys. Today, I have two resources I’m going to give you I’m going to drop those into the comments in a couple of minutes, once we get there. But you know, the reading breakthrough advertising back to the headline area really reminded me on why we need to do this.
Because when you speak to your one reader, if you don’t know about the rule of one, I have a blog post I’ll drop that in there as well. or other Facebook Lives I talk about the rule of one.
And most importantly, speaking to that one reader that one ideal person rather than trying to speak to the world. really honing in on that one reader also helps you get more specific and bring out your personality more because you know how they connect with you. You can write these headlines that really speak directly to that one reader.
So again, you don’t have to be generic, you can be fun, you know, when you know your one reader the way you do. It just makes it so much easier to write those headlines and subject lines, you know, their interests, you know, their desires, you know what gets them up in the morning, you know, what kind of coffee they have, you know, you can write some really fun things that are going to grab their attention.
The other thing I want to quickly go over to his and we don’t talk about this a whole lot, which I think we need to do more of is market sophistication. The more sophisticated the market, the more they know, the the more specific the headlines need to be, as well as the awareness of the audience. You hear me talk about that in some other Facebook Lives as well as I have on YouTube as well talking about the levels of awareness, you have to speak very differently to the different kinds of audience awareness.
So if and when I talk about market sophistication in awareness, you know, if there’s a brand if there’s products out there that everybody knows about, like soap, for example, laundry soap, dish, soap, paper, toilet paper, things like that, you know, that is not only as a sophisticated market, but that’s brands that everybody knows about.
So you need to start tackling your headlines and subject lines differently than a brand for example, that’s maybe new to the market that you need.
To educate with Now, granted, there’s not that much that’s really new to the market these days, we can go back and think about when Apple first introduced the iPod, you know, that was something brand new to the marketplace, they needed to do something that really showed there that you know how different it is and how to really attract people. But again, you know, we don’t have that much.
If you if you have something that that’s new to the marketplace, drop it in the comments below. Let’s talk about that. So when we talk about that, you really got to start writing differently for that. So I want you to just really start thinking about how you can write your subject lines.
So I have my friend Justin, Justin Blackmon who did this, this project called the headline project. So he talks about writing different headlines, and I’m dropping in another resource for you. It’s Jay Abraham wrote, it’s a PDF. It is like the 100 greatest 100 100 greatest headlines ever written.
What I want you to do with these is what as, as a marketer, you probably either have a swipe file, or maybe you don’t know what a swipe file is. That’s all that stuff that you collect, that really captures your attention.
And why is it you just put them into a file, we call those swipe files, so that you can use them as examples and and samples for writing. And it’s just a list of different headlines that over time have been has captured people’s attention. And again, my friend Justin did 100 headlines in 100 days, it’s a great resource for you as well, to help you build and work on your headlines and how to write them in a way that captures the attention of people.
So that’s what today is all about. grab those two resources, add them to your swipe file.
And again, you know, subject lines, there are there are subject line and headline formulas that you will see here on this list list, especially like the old how to, you know, the secret of you know, there’s, there’s, there’s certain formulas out there to capture attention, but you’ve got to make them your own. So in the swipe files, the ones that you find interesting, how can you rewrite them, so that it pertains to your product that pertains to your brand and pertains to your audience.
So for example, if I was taking the secret of making people like you, the first one on this page, of course, was Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, you know, another one of the greatest headlines ever written. Because what we want to do is not only capture their attention, you’re talking directly to that audience. So and really creating something that’s hooky. So the secret of making people like you, you know, if you’re a soap maker, you can write the secret to an ingredient, for example, the secret to lavender. If you’re if you’re a letter maker, for example, you can do you can write something like the secret to soft and supple leather, you know, or how to the secret to choosing the right letter product for for you the right leather jacket, the right leather shoes, you know, so you can use these headlines to really start crafting headlines that going to work for you and your audience. So I want to thank you guys for being here today.
If you have questions or comments, go right ahead and drop them in. If you have questions on the kind of headline to write or if you’re stuck, and you need some help drop it right there in the comments. And let’s go through and play with headlines. If you have written some really awesome headlines and you want to share them also drop those in the comments. Because I have found that one of my one of my not one of my strongest points as a copywriter are headlines and subject lines. And I always go to my swipe files to really start to craft new exciting ones.
Because again, headlines are hard headlines are those things that have to grab the attention. And you’ve got to play around with them, you know, writing one headline and go, Oh, that’s good enough. may seem like a thing to do.
But the more you write out your headlines like 10, maybe 15, headlines or subject lines per piece of content that you’re writing, you’ll really get used to writing those headlines and playing around with them. You can even test them out on your audience as well. Which headline converted more which headline made people read your piece of content more? Which one did they bounce more.
So again, you know those headlines and those subject lines are really, really important pieces to your marketing and important pieces to your copy. Because when you put your stuff out there you want eyeballs on them and to get the eyeballs on them starts with the headline. So awesome.
Thank you for joining me today. Questions or whatever, please contact me or putting your comments below and let’s talk headlines. All right, take care, and I’ll see you next time.
