Last night I had one of the weirdest dreams.
Picture a long & straight path with a big brown bear at the end of it.
Now, for whatever DUMB reason, the “game” was to step onto the path (on the bear-end) a few yards in front of the bear and then walk in the opposite direction of the bear (with your back turned toward the bear).
Out of our group – the details are fuzzy but there were probably 10+ people doing this – everyone made it (except one).
Fortunately, it was not gruesome because the bear was in a playful mood.
However, immediately after, this path we were all on happened to turn into a hallway of a house.
Inside this house, I had several fully grown horses who had escaped their pen. So I had to corral them — and yes, all of this was somehow happening inside the house.
And finally, as if all of that wasn’t weird enough…
This house was floating on an aircraft carrier out in the middle of the ocean. And right next to it was an even bigger water slide with no one else but…
Dan Kennedy standing at the top…
Giving a marketing talk…
And then inviting people onto a free video series.
I don’t know if that dream is a sign for anything lol
But at the very least, it gave me an idea to write to you about…
How To Choose A Headline
Often, it’s difficult to come up with a great headline.
What do you say in it?
How do you know if it will be good enough?
Should you mention multiple benefits?
Should it be a statement or a question?
You can probably find a ton of great headline templates out there but you still have to figure out WHAT to put into that template.
So, here’s what you do…
When you’re stuck, use the…
“Wait, what?” trick.
It’s a headline that starts off normal like everything else so they will be reading it in a trance (because it’s just like the 100 other headlines they’ve read today) and then BAM – you hit them with the curve ball of something they were totally not expecting that gets them to wake up and go… “Wait, what?”
Take a regular headline template like…
“How To [Get X Benefit]”
And just add…
“How To [Get X Benefit] with [Weird Totally Unexpected Thing That Doesn’t Normally Go With This Subject].”
It doesn’t have to be fancy.
In fact, it can be quite simple.
I used this concept in a previous email newsletter.
“How To Grow Your Email List With Green Olives”
That headline (in this case, an email subject line) had the biggest open rate of anything else so far.
What makes this work is Juxtaposition.
Putting two completely unrelated things (that don’t normally go together) together.
Like in the case of my weird dream…
– Playing a game with a wild animal.
– Chasing after fully-grown horses INSIDE of a home that was on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean.
– And somehow having Dan Kennedy MC the whole thing with his marketing talk on top of a giant waterslide that was floating in the ocean next to everything.
One final note:
You DO want to have some sort of connection (even if loose) between those two opposing elements in the body of your message so that the headline has some sort of “pay off”.
See you on the next one…
Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx
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