*Look at it this way*

You need to really put yourself in their shoes and understand what matters to them. As a contact of mine would say - where's pain? What are pressures on enterprise, department or even marketplace as a whole?

Can you present a persuasive Return On Investment? Can you show how your product or service removes pain?

It's all about identifying with your audience.

About David Rosam - http://ITcopy.com

David Rosam cut his teeth on writing for IBM's EMEA division. Since then, David has written copy for small and medium enterprises through to global brands such as Microsoft, Oracle and Hewlett Packard.

Add Another $1,000 A Month To Your Income

Want To Impress And Delight Your Friends And Family?

When appealing to your reader's self-interest, you must target a strong emotion. The first example above targets people's desire for more money. Most regular folks would certainly like to have another thousand dollars a month coming in. The second example targets people's sense of pride. Practically everybody wants to feel more important and look good in eyes of their friends and family.

Your product or service has a strong emotional appeal built into it (if you haven't found it yet you'll need to do so right away). And there may even be more than one emotion involved. If so, then use one which is strongest and most positive for your headline.

Fear is an example of a negative emotion. Sure, you can sell using fear in a headline, but it's a dicey way to do business and can backfire on you. You could alienate your reader. Better to bring fear angle in later in your copy in a “quieter” way, if you have to use it.

I once fell for a product because of a fear-mongering headline and fear-laden copy. And to this day I hold a grudge against that marketer. He'll never get any of my business again.

Remember to keep your target market's wants and desires in front of your mind at all times. Find specific problems they have and need solutions for and use that knowledge to make your headline more targeted.

3. Combine methods and/or bring in your product or service to be even more specific

If you can combine two or even all three of these attention-getting methods in your headline, then so much better. Using our headline examples from above, we could combine them like this:

Amazing New Report Reveals Simple Method For Adding $1,000 A Month To Your Income

Famous Conjurer's New Book Shows How You Can Easily Learn Memory Tricks That Will Impress And Delight Your Friends

These two headlines bring in news and even a bit of curiosity. And they're much more specific and targeted because they refer to actual product being offered. That's a good thing.

But you don't need to combine attention-getting methods to make your headline more specific. By just adding your product or service you'll do a lot. Going back to our original headline examples, we can use only self-interest angle (which, remember, is most effective attention-getting method) and still make things much more specific.

Like this:

Add Another $1,000 A Month To Your Income With My Proven Trading Service

Impress And Delight Your Friends With These Simple Memory Tricks Anybody Can Learn

With your own product or service it should be fairly easy to follow this same route and craft a workable headline. But spend some time on it. The great copywriter Ted Nicholas says he spends 90% of his copywriting time on headline. And you should do same!

Remember, a decent headline not only grabs your reader, it also makes your job easier when writing rest of your copy. The copy will flow smoothly out of that good headline, because “table has been set”, so to speak.

So go to it and write that good headline. You'll be amazed at difference it makes for you.