We all love a good story. It seems to be something that’s just part of human nature. We find stories interesting, no matter where we hear them. Some of the stories are more interesting and riveting than others, of course.
Think about when you’re most likely to pay attention to a story. You’ll usually pay attention to a story that relates to you or something you’re typically interested in. You’ll pay attention to a story that is suspenseful in some way and that awakens your emotions.
People want to know more about the products they are thinking about buying. They don’t want to buy blindly, especially not in today’s day and age. Gone are the days when people only had access to items in their local stores. They really didn’t need to read reviews because there weren’t any other choices – they had to go with what was there.
That’s not the case these days. Today, people can buy whatever they want online. It doesn’t matter if they live across the country or even across the world– they can access the exact products they want.
This gives people many more choices. It’s a wonderful thing, although it does have its downsides. For one thing, there are so many choices that it can be hard to make a decision. Should you buy this thing or that thing? Would this product serve your purposes better or would a different product serve your purposes better?
Do you remember your parents teaching you how to tie your shoes? If so, then there’s a possibility that your parents used a story to teach you this task (“first make a bunny ear, then make another…”).
And if you were one of the lucky ones who learned shoe-tying through a story, then you probably picked up the skill quite fast.
Why? Because stories are memorable. And they’re also great ways to turn a complex task into a simple one.
But stories don’t just work on small children. They also work on your prospects to persuade them to your viewpoint, teach them a valuable lesson or to otherwise make a point.
It’s extremely important to understand the difference between features and benefits when you write copy. In fact, not understanding the difference can be death to your sales.
Have you ever read a sales page and thought to yourself that it was just so boring that you couldn’t even force yourself to keep going even if you thought you might want the product? I’m sure you have – we’ve all seen those terrible, ineffective sales letters.
But maybe to this point you haven’t been able to identify what really separates the really effective sales letters (the ones that make you buy even when you didn’t originally intend to) from those that aren’t at all effective.
Maybe it’s the case that you’re really struggling to write effective sales copy yourself. Maybe your conversions aren’t high – people are visiting your sales page but they aren’t reading or buying.
Your headline “block” has one main job:
Get your prospect’s attention.
To that end, here are the three pieces of your headline:
Example: “Attention NBA Fans…”