Your headline!



You can have the greatest looking page in the world. You can have the sexiest images in the world or the best sales copy, and none of that matters. When someone comes to your page, and sees a headline that's flat, what are the chances they'll continue to read on? Slim and none. They won't. You could even put up an awesome headline with nothing but an opt-in box, and people would join your list. Of course, it would have to really satisfy that WIIFM (What's in it for me?) need, but it could work if your headline was kick-butt incredible.

Maybe you're worried because you're not the best copywriter in the world. That's not a problem. Get some software that creates headlines for you. Give it some information about what you're trying to do by filling in a few boxes, and then, it will come back to you with a whole bunch of choices. Pick the headlines you like best. Or, hire a copywriter to write some great headlines for you. Pick your favorites from those. Why?

You probably won't come up with the best headline first time around, no matter how much you love it. You need to test these and track them before you'll find just the right one. Do a split test and keep it up until you see that one headline is working better than the other.

Start with an A/B split test, where everything on two pages is the same, except for one element. This would be your headline. An easy way to advertise the two pages is by putting them into a rotator and then, advertising one link. Or, you can advertise the pages separately. It makes no difference. Either way, be sure you have some kind of tracking going so that you can see the results.

Unless you have a tracking program working already, use Google Analytics (http://analytics.google.com). You can sign up free, and start using it right away. Once you do, you'll get a little bit of code that needs to be uploaded to your squeeze page and your thank-you page. If you can't do this yourself, hire someone to do it for you. It should be very inexpensive. After that's done, you'll be able to see how many people came to your page and how many of them actually opted in.

You should probably advertise to at least 500 if not 1,000 visitors before you can decide if a headline is working. After that, you should be able to determine which headline works best. Then, either revise the headline that lost or choose another from the headline creator software and try that. Keep doing this. Repeat the process until you're satisfied with your opt-in rate.

Size the headlines right, too. If your viewer has a 21" monitor, your headline will scroll all the way across it, unless you contain it. Create a table of one row by one column when you're building your squeeze page, and put everything into it--your headline, your copy, and your opt-in box. If you make the table 650 to 750 pixels wide, the headline will be directly in front of people's eyes, just where you want it.

You can create curiosity with your headline. You can also prod people, inspire them, or make them laugh. But whatever you do, be sure it makes people wonder what comes next? When that happens, they opt-in to your list to find out. By keeping people on the edge of their seats, by teasing them just a little, you'll probably find better results.