The fate of your entire sales letter, web page, email, advertorial, or blog article…
It all rests on the headline.
Ok, a little dramatic, and not entirely true, but your headline will be the first thing the reader sees. It damn well better grab them by the eyeballs and yank them down the page.
Now, you may know that calling out your target market in your headline can be an effective way to do just that. If you can make the reader think, “wow, do they know me or something?”…
You bet your tail you’ll have an interested prospect.
Problem is, some people get specific in their headlines the wrong way. Below, I’ll explain how not to go about it, then show you how to do it right.
The “Busy Single Mothers Making Approximately $50,000-$60,000 Per Year With 2 Kids!” Approach
One beginner “trick” for catching your audience’s attention is to jam plenty of demographic and psychographic information into the headline. Just look at the subheading of this section of the post for an example.
At very first thought, it seems like it should work. Well, maybe not to the absurd degree that I did it…
But one might think “Busy single mothers — *Insert Claim Here*” would be a killer headline. You are, after all, being specific. You’re honing in on your target audience.
Right?
Right?
Well, honing in on your target audience doesn’t really work like that.
You see… Most people don’t walk around constantly conscious of their status at this level, or usually at all.
Listing all their demographic/psychographic info will just sound like pandering.
I mean, I don’t consider myself a “single white male Texan copywriter making $XYZ per year who’s tired of dealing with *Laundry List of Problems*.”
It’s hyperspecific to me, but if I read that headline, I’d cringe so hard my head would roll off my shoulders.
Sure: sometimes, one piece of demographic or psychographic information might pop into my mind. If I want to learn a copywriting skill, for example, a headline calling out copywriters could work if done right.
But this works only temporarily and within that specific context.
Most of the time, I just think of myself as Bradley Schnitzer.
You know what’s really on your customers’ minds, though?
Meet Them Where They Are
Their pains. Their problems.
Like I said, a “Busy Single Mother Making Approximately $50,000-$60,000 Per Year With 2 Kids” doesn’t think of herself as such 24 hours per day.
Nope. Instead, she might be stressed out about money…
Tired all the time from working 3 jobs to make ends meet…
Worried about putting food on the table for her kids.
Hell, maybe she’s confused about how to put herself out there in the dating world.
(You could say this one’s niche-dependent.)
You know. Actual pains that this type of person likely deals with or thinks about plenty of times a day, or at least deals with unconsciously.
So a great place to start would be to study your market further and really get to know their biggest pains, fears, goals, and so on. Then pick one you think is the best, and spend some time on that headline.
The,
Now, you can touch upon more demographic information in your copy… but that, too, shouldn’t be shoved in. It could come across as a story.
A story about yourself. A story about someone else you know. A story about someone famous. A story about another customer.
That’s how you work in demographic information, but I digress.
(One caveat to all this: the occasional “how this *Demographic and/or Psychographic* accomplished XYZ with ABC” can work in some instances, like in case studies. But again, you’re introducing a character in a story. Not just shoving in information to “connect” with your audience. If you do it gracefully, it should work well.)
Use the RIGHT Kind of Specificity
When it comes to grabbing your customer’s attention in the headlines… don’t just shove in a bunch of demographic and psychographic information. It feels artificial, forced, and “pandery.”
Instead, know your customer better than they know themselves. Understand their loftiest goals, their deepest fears, their burning pains, and so on. Demographic information can be used in the copy, but only where it arises naturally (such as when telling a story).
Oh, you want help with headlines? Or maybe an entire piece of copy?
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