Copywriting - Headlines That Motivate

By Author: Victor Rodriguez
Total Articles: 35
Comment this article

Does your headline motivate your readers? Does it capture their interest and leave them wanting to read more? A good headline does just that, it's the "hook" that elicits a response from your audience. A good headline doesn't just announce what your copy is all about, hell it might not even have much to do with your main point at all or perhaps just superficially.
The true role of the headline is to not just grab attention as many copywriting aficionados claim; it does much more than that. It provokes, stimulates, angers, frustrates, challenges, surprises, entices, pleases or evokes any number of other emotional responses that you can imagine.
Many authors today fall flat when constructing a headline for their work. In fact crafting an effective headline can be the most challenging part of writing a persuasive piece of writing. Following are a few pointers for developing headlines that move beyond the mere "in your face empty promises" breed of headlines and propel your headlines into the realm of powerful, motivating words of emotionally charged magic.
Ask yourself this. Do I want my readers to feel surprised ...
... at what I am offering? Do I want them to feel shocked? Is that the best way to "grab their attention" These are common used emotional triggers in headline writing and quite frankly they are tired and worn out. We all know that whatever you are selling is going to be drastically reduced for a limited time and we are over it. We all know how rare and wonderful this opportunity is that you are presenting us and hey, you know what? We have heard it all six billion times from six billion other writers so give us something different, we can't be surprised or shocked anymore. There's still a place for the shock factor in your headlines but try not to rely on it alone to have the impact needed to motivate your readers.
What other emotional triggers can my headline pull? Can I play on the human need to belong? Can I play on the need to feel secure, to feel less pain, to find love, joy, happiness or even make my reader's lives just one bit less stressful? Can I connect the readers to my own story in a way that moves them? Ask yourself this. What am I really selling? Is it simply a product or service or is there a deeper more significant problem that I am helping my readers to solve? It's an important question to ask and one that leads to developing that "hook" that we discussed earlier.
Make a list of the emotional impacts that your product can have on a reader. Whether it's as simple as saving a few dollars or a few minutes of time or as large as changing a reader's perspective on life for the better; no matter what you are writing about in your sales copy there's an emotional trigger buried in there. Find it and use it as the basis for your headline. Once you do you will discover that your headline not only gets peoples attention it motivates them to know more about what you have to say. And that's really what you want after all isn't it?

buy custom essay papers