A tale of two headlines......


Let’s imagine that you sell vacuum cleaners. You have read an article that tell about the dust mite and all te evils it brings to the home. You get all excited and think "If I can just get the message out about this little critter, I’ll get people to come into my store to solve the dreaded dust mite infestation plaguing them." So you write an ad, and put it in your local paper

The headline reads "All About The Dust Mite" and has a little picture of the dust mite next to the headline. The rest of the ad tells about how terrible the dust mite is, and how you can get rid of them with your wonderful vacuum cleaner.

You wait by the door of your store, preparing for the thundering herd of buyers waiting to be saved. Nobody shows. Why? Because nobody read your ad.

Here’s why nobody read your ad; Nobody is interested in reading an article about dust mites.

Here’s what has to happen before the reader reads your article;

They have to know what a dust mite is.

They have to know that they are undesirable.

They have to want to know more about them out of curiosity.

You have to compete with everything else in the newspaper. And the only way you’ll win is if nothing else on the page is more interesting that learning more about an insect.

And the vast majority of readers won’t see a personal benefit to reading the rest of the ad.

Take the exact same ad an picture of the dustmite, Now the headline reads;

"If you own a pet, your home may already be infested with these mites! Here’s how to tell..."

The reader stops, their eyes widen; "Oh, my God! I have a dog. I’m sure everything is OK, but I better make sure! I remember my dog scratching last week. Maybe we do have an infestation! I better read this to make sure we don’t!" See the difference?

The key words in the headline are If, already, infested (a visceral word), and here.

The word here drags you into the rest of the ad. But first, you have to get their attention.

Claude Whitacre is author of the book The Unfair Advantage Small Business Advertising Manual. Available at www.claudewhitacre.com. Want to know more? You can also receive three months of Claude Whitacre's Unfair Advantage Gold Membership which includes $834.00 in newsletters, information, CD's, bonus, and outright bribes for only $5.95.

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