How To Capture Attention In Your Ads and Landing Pages With Headlines.

Before you can get the sale, you have to grab your prospects' attention.

This is no easy task.  

Your prospects are bombarded with people trying to get a piece of their time.  And, with work, kids, and other higher priorities, they don't give it-up easily.

Advertising on Google.com offers a powerful advantage.  Your ad is shown only to those who are actively looking for a solution at that very moment.  This means you're not interrupting them while they are in the middle of an important task.

At the same time, you're still competing against the free organic results and dozens of competing advertisers.  They also may have the spouse and kids come calling, an important business call come-in, or other interruptions as well.

Often you see advertisers ignore this reality.  They may put the name of the business in their ad's headline.  Then, the landing page is no better with a confusing layout and irrelevant images dominating the page. 

Click-thru-rates and conversions suffer.

What can you do instead?

You can capture your prospects' attention with a benefit-oriented headline.  All this means is you give a good reason for why your prospects should spend time with you.  You answer what your product or service can do for them.

Words offer the benefit over images in that you can say exactly what you mean.  Nothing is left up for interpretation.  Your ideal prospects all relate to what you're saying.

Let's talk about some examples of headline formulas you might use in just about any situation:

• "How to" headlines.  For example, "How to look years younger with breakthrough facial cream."
• "Discover" headlines.  "Discover how you can save time and energy with automated pay-per-click campaign generation software."
• "Quickly and Easily" headlines. "Quickly and easily make signs of aging disappear."  
• "How a" or other story headline.  "How a struggling artist uncovered a simple secret to make a living with his unconventional art starting within days... and how anybody else can do the same."

There are plenty of other headline formulas.  However, be cautious when using them.  You want to make sure your headline fits your product or service.  When in doubt, keep it simple.  Offer a straight forward benefit others can't compete with.  This is opposed to seeing someone else using a headline formula successfully on their landing page and trying to copy it without understanding why it works.

One of the best ways to come-up with headline ideas is to simply look at the cover of magazines.  You can take the formulas and customize them to your prospects and product.  

Finally, when split testing your landing pages and ads to find the most effective ones, starting by comparing headlines is a great idea.  A bad headline can kill an otherwise great ad... and a good headline can transform an average ad into a phenomenal success.

We'll go more in-depth into creating killer headlines to rocket your response in the days to come.