John Carlton on Copywriting: Perfect Headlines
John Carlton defines a perfect headline and tells you how to create one.Ā He tells what a successful ad needs to accomplish.
His comments: Your headline will be perfect, you're opening sentence will be perfect, every sentence in your offer will be perfect when you cannot take out a single word without damaging the comprehension of that sentence. So, if you see a word in there, and I donāt care if itās a noun, verb, or whatever, thereās a lot of mumbling going on in a lot of writing.Ā Mumbling takes people back to that passive state. We have words, like power words, like good words. They are the tools we use to bring people out of that passive state into a semi-active state. You want them agitated. One of the best testimonials I've ever gotten, and I've gotten many of them, are along the lines of āD**n you Carlton, I am not going to buy anything because Iām not the kind of guy that buys from ads.Ā But then I woke up at 3 am and couldn't get back to sleep until I called and orderedā.
Thatās a successful ad.Ā It gets into their head, works down into their emotional sweet spot, works the passions, doesnāt let them get un-agitated.Ā All we have are words.Ā You canāt actually reach out and throttle them.Ā A lot of teachers talk about reaching out from the page and grabbing them.Ā They like to say that in the big agencies.Ā But they donāt know what theyāre talking about. What theyāre talking about is shock value, at best.Ā Shock value gets your attention.Ā After that, all you have are words to be able to bring them in, hold them, and move them through what we call the āgreased slideā of the sales process.Ā Working them down to the point where you want them to be. To get more copywriting and marketing tips from John Carlton go to www.MarketingRebelClub.com.
