To Write a Grabber Headline, Know Who you are Talking to -- and Why

by Chaun Soh

The most successful companies understand that their products or services will only be considered by a limited number of people. They also know what their prospects want — which is fundamental to explaining how their offering meets their needs.

The more personally and meaningfully you talk to this specific group of people, the more successfully you can expect to communicate with them. Picture the people you are talking to and address them one-on-one, not as a crowd.

Clear, specific targeting is crucial

Targeting a specific type of customer enables you to:

plan marketing initiatives more effectively;
allocate marketing dollars more efficiently;
detect and eliminate sales tactics that don't work;
learn more about your customers' preferences and habits for use in future promotions.

Targeted marketing is about identifying the people most likely to buy your product or service and focusing your marketing efforts accordingly.

Breaking your target market into sub-groups — segmentation — categorises the different characteristics of your market and enables you to clearly establish its needs and wants.

How to identify and segment your broad market

There are several key factors to bear in mind when creating your communication strategy; all are fundamental to the way your prospects live, think and decide to buy:

Demographics: The age, gender, education, occupation, income, marital status, ethnic and/or religious background, family size and composition of your prospect customers.

For example, we can expect people over 40 to be more prone to rheumatism than younger groups. Based on this, an astute marketer will focus on this group as the most likely to buy their remedies.

Geographic: Factors such as location, size, population and climatic structure of the target area.

Examples: in London, certain parts of the West End are more affluent than the East End and you will find particular products sold in these regions based on their affluence. In India, McDonald's sells burgers made from lamb rather than beef because of religious issues. In Mexico more chili sauce is added. And so on.

Psychographics: The lifestyle, general personality, social class, behaviours, activities, interests, attitudes, beliefs and loyalty characteristics of prospects.

Psychographic profiling will help reveal why, for example, some consumers prefer to stand apart from the crowd while others will want to be part of it. Or why some consumers only attend an occasion in particular attire.

Customer needs and behaviors: Their level of knowledge, means of obtaining information, their needs and wants, their usage and response to products of services and their opinions.

Take coffee for example. Some consumers will stay with their favourite brands even if competing brands offer more value. Others will prefer decaffeinated; others will stick to organic coffee because of its benefits — despite its relatively high cost.

It's all about knowing your customer

To do this you need to have a picture of your 'ideal customer' in mind. Then write as if they were right there with you.

For instance: 'My target customer is a middle-class woman in her 30s or 40s, married with children, environmentally conscious and physically fit.'

Based on the numbers you uncover in your research and analysis, you may know, for example, that there are approximately 7,000 of those potential customers in your area!

If 2,000 of them are already loyal to a competitor, that still leaves 5,000 who are not, or who have not yet purchased from anyone.

Only when you have done your due diligence and have a customer profile, you can begin the task of writing and designing the ad to communicate the intended message.

Getting your headline right

Your headline may be all your prospects are ready to read. You know from newspapers and web pages how important headlines are. They can make or break an item, get it read...or not.

If your headline is dull, meaningless or doesn't relate to the reader, you might as well stop writing right there.

It should, at the very least, flag down your prospect, touch a nerve, make a claim unique to your product and offer a strong reason for the reader to find out more. Here are some approaches to consider:

Lead with your #1 benefit (not the feature that creates it)
Ask a question that addresses prospect concerns and provides a solution
Offer a solution your competitors don't...but leave enough unsaid so the prospect will want to keep reading
Help the prospect picture the benefit
Offer an alternative to competitors' products
Highlight return on investment (costs more but saves heaps)
Highlight a novel aspect of your product...maybe used in a different way (eg, Napisan escaped its niche by becoming a product with wider uses)

Above all, make sure your headline (and the copy) talk TO the prospect, not AT them.

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