How to pick the best headline....

[livebig!]

Hello, I'm in the process of writing my first sales letter right now. It's going well, but I'm struggling to come up with the best headline. I've heard that copywriting gurus say you should write at least 50 headlines. Ok, I did that, but HOW do you pick the best one? It seems like after a point, you just pick one out of a hat... Is this true?

[TimSchaefer]

Writing 50, 100 or even 200 headlines can be helpful, but that doesn't mean you're going to have a winner out of the whole bunch.

The "gurus" that actually write that many are pulling from a deep bag of tricks, applying different approaches and techniques to create different styles of headlines for a product or service.

In your case, since you've got 50 of your own to deal with, try this to start narrowing your field:

1) Find the top 5 that just jump out at you. Write those down on a piece of paper.

2) Go back through the entire list and segment the headlines into rough categories. Try to lump them into different ones like benefit-focused, story/hook, news, big promise, etc. Just something to sort them out in a logical way.

3) Select the best from each category and write those down on a different piece of paper.

4) Compare your original top 5 list to the categorized list. Any duplicates? Put a star by them.

5) Look at the headlines and think about your market's reaction to them. What would really get their juices flowing?

6) Pick the top 3 overall from your two smaller list. Pull out three sheets of paper and write them down at the top, one per page.

7) Work over and edit the top 3 as you deem necessary to make every word earn its way into the headline. At this point, you'll have probably thought of new ways to combine, build or subtract from your narrowing list to make a new headline. If so, add them to the overall list and reevaluate.

8) Pick the top winner out of the 3 and place the other 2 "on deck" for split testing. If possible, try to have these 3 be different types of headlines. You'll be able to zero in on your market's preference quicker if you start at wider extremes in your testing.

Hope that helps give you a way out of your headline overload.

Tim

[livebig!]

Thankyou, Tim! That was a great help. I think I've come up with a couple good ones... I guess I will just test them in my copy to see if they're pulling like I hope.

[MattRobson]

I would apply the "remember test".

Think of how ever many you want as potential candidates...Then, the next day...write down the ones you can remember from that list.

Only use headlines that you yourself can remember.

Don't try hard to memorize them or anything. A good headline should be easy to remember for days, and, hopefully even longer.

This headline was part of some joke from about 15 years ago that I still remember:

"Mysterious Boy Dogs It"

[Phalanx]

Hey Tim and livebig, I just wanted to say thanks for this thread!

Earlier today, I was wondering about this squeeze page I had. I wasn't too happy with the headline, or the rest of the copy for that matter.

Then I remembered this thread!

So I started jotting down headlines, going for 50...

After about a dozen, I realized I had written down one that I REALLY liked. A lot more than any of the others. So I tried putting it up on the squeeze page, to see what it felt like.

And as I saw it there, I got huge burst of inspiration about the rest of the copy! Over the next half hour, I sat there, keyboard steaming, and literally re-wrote the whole squeeze page.

The copy feels much more powerful now. So... thanks, guys!

It's amazing what the right headline can do.

[briancassingena]

In the end, the best headline is the one which pulls the best response.

Obvious, but that's the acid test.

50 is the absolute minimum. Guys like Trevor Crook and Ted Nicholas write 150 to 200 for every project.

One way to distill the best headlines is to apply the 'who cares' test. Read out each headline aloud and then see if you can realistically think Who Cares? Better yet, find someone else, someone in the target market and read the headlines to them.

[Christie Love]

One thing that helped me in the beginning of my copywriting trek was to review a list of top 100 headlines Victor Schwab's "How to write a good advertisement." I'm sure there are more helpful headline lists you can find, but Victor's book is a great place to start.

Then, use his headlines as a basis to get ideas to write your own powerful headline.

I hope this tip helps.

[Magic Mel]

You'll never know what headline pulls the best, till you test it. One thing you can do is create a few headlines, and keep everything else the same. Throw a rotator script and see which headline pulls the best.

[Adaptive]

What technique are you using to write your headlines?

Do you have a "swipe file" of proven headlines to spark your creativity?

Regards,
Allen