Remember the door-to-door salesmen who used to call on your house when you were a kid? I often wondered how hard those guys had to work just to make a few sales. They had the advantage of ‘being there’ with the customer so their sales pitches could not easily be ignored. But many, if not most of these face-to-face prospects would listen politely, but never buy anything. 
On the web, we don’t come to the buyer, he or she comes to us. We call out to those who may be interested in what we are selling. We have at our disposal a neon sign to call those readers who may have an interest in what we sell, it’s called a headline. The headline is the most important piece of a sales letter. The headline functions as an announcement to all ‘passers by’ just what the offer to sell is about, and most important, why the reader should stop and read more.
A headline calls to those, and only those who are interested in what we have to say- and those are the only people that interest us. Think about how you read the newspaper. You scan the headlines and stop to read more when the headline offers something that is compelling to you. You may not be interested in a story about gardening – but understand that there is some reader out there who can’t wait to find that story about trees and shrubs that you simply passed by.
Web surfers read at a more frantic pace than even newspaper readers. Your job as a marketer is complicated because visitors to web sites are used to ads, sales pitches and offers. Our job is to get them to pause and read. The most carefully-crafted ad copy is useless unless the reader stops to read. Spend as much time on your headline as on your sales copy. Make your headline clear, but compelling – offer the reader a benefit to consider your offer. Don’t try to hide your intent – the reader knows you are selling something, make them glad they stopped to read.
Related posts:
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for your submission to the eleventh edition of the Blog Carnival: Blogging. Your post has been accepted and its live: http://thatsblog.com/?p=90
-ThatsBlog.com
Quality content on your site will not only help with conversions but will also help improve your rankings in the search engines which will in turn bring more people to your site.
I think the main thing that will increase conversion is if web users find what they looking for on your website. Surely good content and quality will drive visitors to your site but that does not necessarily mean that they are going to buy something and that is essentially what you are aiming a. That is why you need to be specific to your market so that users looking for products within that market will buy from you.
With what we’re doing, we want people on and off of our page fast because we’re into affiliate marketing. Our goal is to for the customer to go through us and then purchase within a time frame. I digress. Having new content on your sites everyday will help to you to be recognized when you are crawled. This will help rank you higher and in turn, will do wonders for your conversion rate.
Selling should be persuasion with integrity. And as for marketing online, integrity could be shown with the quality of the content that we have in our websites and in order to persuade these visitors to buy something it is first important to build up a connection in addition to a good copywriting skills which is also a must.
I have seen many retailers let down by poor content on their websites. Remember customers are after informative content, great images of the products they are looking for. Any additional content such as videos or 3D demonstations add in that extra level. Remember content is king!
You’re totally right, there are so many differences when it comes to marketing a product offline and online. Since you won’t have any problem on marketing the your product online, you only need to do a reliable presentation with a very appealing sales pitch so you can convince people to buy through you.
.-= Gab@purchase house´s last blog ..Purchase a House in Australia: The Truth about House Flipping =-.
I think the headline is important as long as you don’t make it too gimmicky. People are becoming more and more aware of marketing tactics so you really have to deliver if you have a great headlines. That’s why having great content is a vital part of any online business.
.-= Jim@ Wooden Garage Doors´s last blog ..Traditional Wooden Garage Doors =-.
Look buying or not buying is not in our hand but we can try to convince our customers as much as we can, rest is up-to them. But we have to do our part with best efforts, that is refreshing some parts of the page with fresh quality content, you can even change sales pitch after some days, this makes your pages visible to the search engines. Make the sales page a ROCKET!!!!
.-= Sourav@Interior Design Ideas´s last blog ..Plan Your House With Spanish Home Design =-.
Interesting indeed. Quality over quantity is always a good policy to follow. 250- 300 words of good quality article is the best in my opinion. It’s not too short that there is no content. And it is not too long that you will bore the reader.
You mention headlines in newspapers, which makes me think of how CNN (and other main stream new sources, granted) have really mastered this and of course split-tested their results for different headlines. For example, if you go to their home page right now and look at their list of new stories they deliberately make ambiguous and bizarre headlines to get people to click–and it always works. I think engaging the reader with ambiguity and mystery is one of the best ways to keep them interested, especially online.
Like the poster said before, content is the way to go and what content does, especially in search engines, is get you noticed. If you have new content on frequently, these search engines will realize you have a legit sight and the key to sales is traffic and if you get enough, even a low conversion rate doesn’t matter.
Yes. The importance of the headline has never changed from off-line to on-line world. It’s probably even more so in the online world. Like you said, web surfers tend to glance at even faster pace than newspaper readers. The layout and color scheme of a web site is also important. Many times I went to a site and just click “Back” immediately before even reading the headline because the site looked so unappealing I just couldn’t stand for it.
.-= Leo@Affiliate Game Plan´s last blog ..Highly Profitable Secret Campaign Revealed =-.