Quantum Copywriting Part 1 Headlines

Quantum Copywriting Part 1: Headlines

Let’s get right to it with this simple, yet complex sentence: You will never ever achieve high conversion rates without a stunning copy – ever. No matter how great of a product or service you are offering and no matter how much traffic you are getting, you need an outstanding copy. I’ll say it again – outstanding. And it all starts with the headline.

What Will You Learn?

  • Why copywriting is one of the biggest players in the marketing world – and why most people don’t even invest time in it.
  • What should a headline contain? – what captures your visitors’ attention, what makes them stay on your website instead of jumping on to the next one?
  • Examples of headlines which you should never use – learn from them and realize just how little time people actually invest in copywriting.
  • Headline templates which you can and should use – just insert your stunning copy into the “Blank” areas and you are good to go.
  • In a nutshell – a summary of the things you learned from the first part of the Quantum Copywriting saga.

Copywriting – the Dark Knight of Online Marketing

Link building, link building, link building – this is all you can hear nowadays. “I want links from authority sites”, “I want links from a niche relevant PBN”, “I want GSA SER links, “I want Web 2.0 links, etc, and that’s okay, because link building is a huge factor in SEO. However, there is one problem – what will these links be pointing at?

Let me ask you this – why have you gotten into the world of online marketing a.k.a. the world of internet marketing a.k.a. the world of digital marketing? The answer your brain produced was most probably money. Now, let me ask you this – what is this one thing that will make you the most money out of the Internet? Think hard.

If your answer was traffic, or rankings, or anything else which 99% of the people will respond with, you are doing it wrong. You are thinking wrong. Stop for a moment, focus, and perceive this:

You can drive all the traffic in the world to your website, heck every single person on the face of our planet Earth can visit your website and you still won’t make a lot of money because you are lacking this one thing, and that thing is called conversions. – Scrooge McDuck

You can’t convert. You simply cannot transform a visitor into a customer. Well then, how can you improve your conversion skills? You have two options:

  • Learn copywriting yourself – this takes time, but it is more than well worth it.
  • Hire a professional copywriter – doesn’t take out of your precious time, but costs quite a lot.

But, there is a hidden third option which most people choose without even thinking – they write the copy themselves without ever learning a thing about quantum copywriting in the first place. They end up with something average, or less than average which gets them no results at all, and then they just move on to the next thing thinking this just isn’t their one-day-super-bang-ultra-fast-extremely-easy-no-time-consuming money generating machine. The same story is repeated over and over again until they finally give up and surrender to their regular jobs. What is the problem here? Why does this happen to so many people?

I will try and illustrate this one for you – paint you a word picture, if you will. Let’s say that Chance Towin hired me to consult him on the copywriting of the website that will sell his brand new amazing product – a book called “How to Lose Weight in 2015”. And he paid me $1 million for this job. For the sake of this example, let’s say that the book is actually really good and will provide a ton of value to its future readers. I don’t like the book name, but it doesn’t matter that much, the copy on the squeeze page is what will sell it. This is the perfect time to tell you that value is the core of your business – if you do not provide value, nothing will work, but I didn’t mention it earlier because I thought it’s something everyone knows by default. But, let me say it again:

if your product or service does not provide value to its target audience, you can have all the traffic and conversions you want initially, but it will all go to hell. – Alchemist

Customers will start wanting refunds, they will write bad reviews and you will then kiss your business goodbye. So, number 1 rule is to provide great value to your customers.

Back to the story. So Chance wrote “How to Lose Weight in 2015” and he wants me to consult him on the copywriting of the website which will sell his brand new product – it can be a simple squeeze page. Towin has already bought the domain, setup the website on the hosting provider, and is ready to rock and roll. All he needs is a stunning copy which will sell the product.

We meet up at the gym, because that’s where I like to see what people are really made of. Let’s say we will be hitting chest, because it’s Monday. In between sets we talk about Chance’s book, his vision, and copywriting. He tells me everything there is to know about his future business and we continue pumping. We are already on the 3rd set of the second exercise – incline bench press. I see Towin is breathing hard and he is getting a little woozy. I don’t care.

I tell him that we have 3 more exercises with each having 4 sets of 12 reps. Chance’s eyes flinch. I am testing his mind. The voice in his head starts singing – “You can’t go for that long – you will feel too much pain. It hurts so bad, I want to stop, I just want this to end”. To me Chance will most probably say something like “Dude I am really tired from last night. We had a homecoming party and I stayed up too late, and I also got too drunk, which is why I am this weak now.” I knot understandingly, but I know what he just told himself in his head. Believe it or not, 99% of people will fail such a test of willpower. But, I will give Towin the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just isn’t a pumper.

I tell him that we can skip the rest of the workout and just go have dinner at a nice place nearby – Chance’s favorite pizza happens to be offered there. His eyes fill with joy and his brain starts pumping serotonin like crazy. The pain is over. We head out to the restaurant and we get a table. After 2 –  3 hours of talking, Towin has acquired some knowledge from me in terms of copywriting and he gets an assignment – to write the copy for his squeeze page as soon as possible.

Time goes by and I call Chance to schedule a new meeting to see what’s going on. We meet up at the same restaurant and I get presented with his brand new squeeze page. Dear god. Right from the get-go, I can easily see that this was just written last night when I called him to setup the meeting and that almost no thought was put into it. There are grammar mistakes, the structure is all wrong, and pretty much everything is not as it should be. I wouldn’t want this product even if it was given to me plus some cash. Yes, that bad.

But dude, you paid me $1 million to help you with this, and you are not taking it seriously at all. Do I have to take $1 billion out of you so that you can actually focus and do some great work?

At this point it’s time for excuses – I hate these. Chance goes on by saying that he was too busy with some other things, that he read about some other methods of making money online that seemed much quicker, and stuff like this, and then he ends up with the following words:

I just want to start making some money like right now! Not much, just one or two thousand per month will do, so I can pay some bills. But, it has to be like right now!

That right there is why Chance hasn’t made a single dime out of online marketing. Right there. Everyone is looking for that magical strategy or system that will make them rich in just a few hours. They want money and they want it now. Not after 5 hours, not tomorrow, not after a week – now! And the worst part is that they want to work as little as possible and they don’t want to put in any effort or invest any time. Quite simply, most people want something out of nothing. That’s not how it works.

And believe it or not, that’s how 99% of the people involved in the game of marketing think. This simple mindset setting is destroying them before they have even started. Why am I telling you all this? How is this connected to copywriting?

Because when people hear about copywriting, they head straight for the hills. Run, they say! Run! It’s too much work. You have to learn new stuff in order to apply it. Copywriting is hard they say – it requires thinking, whereas link building and social media marketing are fun – they are social and much more interesting. But that’s not the thing that will make you money. Copywriting is. Conversions are. And you cannot convert well without a stunning copy.

The purpose of this whole section was to aware you of the importance of copywriting and the fact that it is the thing you should be focusing on. But, this section was also meant to show you a simple mindset setting which you have to configure otherwise you will fail in the world of marketing.

Now that you know what’s really going to make you some money, let’s see how you can actually write amazing copy which converts like crazy – starting with the headline.

Quantum Headlines

A quantum headline. Now how can a headline be called quantum? Trust me, you will see. Anyway, your headline is one of the first things visitors will notice when they land on your squeeze page. You better make it count.

Let me start by awaring you on something you might not be aware of. It’s something that I like to call “out-of-the-zone writing”. You have surely felt it if you have ever written anything, but you most probably have not stored it in your brain yet. Let’s say you start writing, but you don’t quite feel like it – maybe you had a bad day, maybe you just have something else occupying your mind. Whatever the case is, you still decide to get on the computer and write the copy for your squeeze page.

Of course, the headline comes first. But, you are not quite in the zone yet. You are not feeling it, thoughts are flowing through your mind like crazy, but you still manage to figure something out for the headline. Then, as you go further down into the body of the copy, you get into a mode I call “in-the-zone writing”. Words are flowing through your head like crazy. You enjoy what you are writing. You start thinking you are the best copywriter ever. And that’s good. It’s good to have confidence, but you want to keep it in check.

And when you are done with the copy and you are sure you have written the best damn sales content ever, you give in to emotion of short, but strong euphoria, and you say to yourself that it’s time to launch the website and start driving traffic towards it. But, you have totally forgotten that your headline and the content before you started feeling the text are not in great shape. They need reviewing and they need it now.

But, you are overpowered by the emotion and you have already launched the website. Traffic starts flowing and conversions are somewhat good, but not great. What went wrong you start to wonder? At this point you are paying more for traffic than you are getting in revenue and you decide to simply let this one go. But there is also another alternative to this scenario – you don’t give up and you simply rationalize why things are not going so well. The suspect again is copywriting, and more specifically, the headline.

What Should a Headline Contain?

Let’s say you are browsing the Internet. You look for this you, look for that – you are in and out of websites in just a few seconds before you have even read much of anything. Why are you leaving websites so quickly? Because nothing caught your mind. Nothing tingled your curiosity. Nothing shocked you. That is the purpose of a headline. It has to disrupt the flow of a human being. It has to shock them and to stop them in their tracks. Otherwise your would-be customers are gone in 2 seconds and off to the next website.

So, the headline of your copy must be a kick in the mind. How do you achieve that? Quite simply, you throw in your biggest and most enticing benefit that your product or service is offering. So in the case of my story with Chance Towin, his headline should include something shocking about weight loss. People have already seen all of the things they have seen, and they want something different. It’s in everyone’s genetics to want something different – genetic diversity is something we are wired to pursue. So when you do find it, you become interested and you become engaged.

If you had started writing the copy while you were in the “out-of-the-zone writing” mode, you must go back and review the beginning of your copy. Your future visitors can pretty much scan the headline, the sub-headline, and probably the radio buttons below it before they decide if your page is worth an investment of time. This whole process takes no more than 2 – 3 seconds. That’s it. You have just under 3 seconds to entice them.

So if your headline is something average, you will be bleeding customers. It is also a good idea to add some visuals – images or even a video. Nothing catches the eye of a human being like bright colors. You can set the video to autoplay – sound is also a flow breaker, but it can be seen as intrusive as well. In the end, your goal should be to shock your audience and grab their attention instantly – not after 3 sentences, not after 5 seconds – instantly!

Let’s see some example of people failing at that and then some example of how you can achieve this lightning copywriting effect.

Examples of Bad Headlines

I will simply post the headline and then a reaction below it – you tell me if I nailed it. Keep in mind that I have taken these examples from the Internet and they are completely unedited and untouched. Let’s begin.

1. If you’re considering buying a Cool Tablet Computer, get this Free Buyers Guide Now!

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 1 Reaction

2. Get Profitable Niches Emailed Directly to You, For Free!

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 2 Reaction

3. Look Inside To Discover How To Make Money At The Push Of A Button.

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 3 Reaction

4. A Verry BRILLIANT Secrets To Banking $1.000/Day CONSISTENTLY Without Need To Spent Any Money – Guaranteed!!

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 4 Reaction

5. Get FREE Stuff Now!

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 5 Reaction

6. Get Instant Access To Your FREE Video!

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 6 Reaction

7. 404 error – The Page You Were Looking For Cannot Be Found, But Don’t Leave Empty Handed…

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 7 Reaction

8. FREE! $3,126 In 13 Days!

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 8 Reaction

9. How To Make Money Online?

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 9 Reaction

10. COPY THIS SYSTEM!!!

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 10 Reaction

 

11. Reveals 7 Quick & Easy Cooking Tricks

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 11 Reaction

12. MAKE MONEY ONLINE! Easy, Fast, Cash!

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 12 Reaction

13. Don’t Spend Another Second Clicking For Traffic Until You Read This Book!

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 13 Reaction

14. Sign-up To The Newsletter And Get A Free eBook

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 14 Reaction

15. Get More LEADS and SALES with Award-Winning Internet Marketing!

Quantum Copywriting Bad Headline Example 15 Reaction

Are 15 enough for you? But seriously, learn from these and do not make the same mistakes. These are just your average, non-engaging headlines that you will see on most websites. Don’t be average.

Headline Templates You Should be Using

Now that we have seen the bad headlines, let’s see a few examples of good ones – headlines that will actually sell something. I want to also note here that you should not use just one of these headlines. Always split test 5 – 10 different headlines to see which one converts the best in your situation. So you can initially write 10 headlines for example, choose 2 of them and split test them. The one the works better remains and you remove the one that has a lower conversion rate, and then you add another one from the remaining 8 headlines you wrote to split test it with the winner from the last split testing game. You do that until you are left with the highest converting headline. If you then start seeing a drop in conversions for whatever reason, start split testing again from scratch. Simple as that.

Now to the headline templates. They are simple texts which are just waiting for you to insert your big bad benefit in them. I want you to remember that this is what their success depends on. If you fill in the blanks with some average copy, they will still not convert that good. So put on your boxing gloves and get ready to punch your visitors right in the mind.

How To “Blank”?

This is a more classical headline that is used quite often in copywriting. It’s simple and elegant and gets straight to the point, but it is not that unique and attention grabbing in my opinion. Again, what matters here is what you replace the “Blank” word with. Some good examples:

  • How to Dominate Facebook With a Brand New Revolutionary Social Media Marketing Campaign?
  • How to Stack Papers using Twitter and a Top Secret Technique Created by Marketing Millionaires?
  • How to Get Rock Hard Abs Without a Change in Diet With this Scientifically Proven-to-Work Routine?

What If You “Blank”?

I like this one because it causes the visitor to activate his imagination. Let me show you:

  • What If You Could Start Making Money 7 Hours After Reading This Course?
  • What If You Were a Superhero and Your Special Power Was to Create Websites Which Look Like Money Trees?
  • What If You Saw a Monkey in Your Dream and it Told You that You will Never Make Any Money Online?

By the way, I am just making these headlines up as I go. Excuse me if some of them are not flawless. But again, the only thought I have when I’m writing these is to create something unique and different, something I have not seen out there.

You Get “Blank” And “Blank”!

Who doesn’t like to get stuff? No one. We live in a consumer-driven society and everyone likes to be given stuff to, well, consume. So let’s give our visitors something:

  • You Get 5 Traffic Generating Techniques And 10 Strategies for Sky-High Conversions All in a Single Blueprint Proven to Work Time and Again!
  • You Get 1 Million GSA SER Verified URLs List And 256 High PR Web 2.0 Accounts For Next Level Rankings!
  • You Get Unlimited Access to Proven Marketing Strategies And Techniques Which Can Start Making You Cash The Day After Tomorrow!

If You “Blank”, Then “Blank”!

This is more of a challenging headline, which is why it is so good. People like challenges, even though most of them will quit before the start. But still, a challenging statement always catches the attention of the visitor:

  • If You Download this Free Report, Then You will Quit your 9/5 Job in 59 Days!
  • If You Learn How To Think Like the Million Dollar Marketers, Then You Will Become One of Us in No Time!
  • If You Knew What Was Written In This Book, Then You Would Quit Your Regular Job And Start an Online Business Tomorrow!

Here’s a Quick Method For “Blank”!

I already told you – people like speed. We live in an exponentially speeding up society. Kind of like what dark energy is doing to our universe. So this headline template works wonders as well:

  • Here’s a Quick Method for Building an Autopilot Money Generating System Which Can be Managed From a Smartphone!
  • Here’s a Quick Method for Losing Weight and It’s Not What You Think!
  • Here’s a Quick Method for Driving an Extra 1,000 Unique Visitors to Your Website Every Day Without Having to Spend a Single Cent!

You can also exchange the “Method” word with “Technique”, “Strategy”, etc. This one I really like, because it represents speed. I like speed. People like speed. Give people some speed and they will give you their money.

How To “Blank” Even If You are “Blank”?

This one is another type of a challenge – but more provocative. Here’s what I mean:

  • How To Start Making a Ton of Money Online Even If You are a Complete Newbie Marketer?
  • How To Write a Stunning Copy Even If You are Not a Professional Copywriter?
  • How To Win the Nobel Prize in Online Marketing Even If You are Not Albert Einstein?

Now You Can “Blank” Even If You “Blank”!

This headline has a more of a results selling point – it tells the visitor what skills they will acquire:

  • Now You Can Make Money Online Even If You are Lazy!
  • Now You Can Write Compelling Copy Even If You Have Never Written Anything In Your Life!
  • Now You Can Create an Online Empire Even If You Have Never Watched Alexander “The Great”!

How I Took a Bunch of “Blank” and Showed Them How to “Blank” and How You Can Do the Exact Same Thing!

Again, provoking the visitor is the idea here:

  • How I Took a Bunch of Idiots and Showed Them How to Make $500 a Day from the Internet Using an Idiotically Simple System and How You Can Do the Exact Same Thing!
  • How I Took a Bunch of Clueless Knuckleheads and Showed Them How to Create a Website Worth Millions and How You Can Do the Exact Same Thing!
  • How I Took a Bunch of Morons and Showed Them How to Start Generating Passive Income with a Top Secret Marketing Technique and How You Can Do the Exact Same Thing!

Imagine If You Could “Blank”!

Again, the imagination. Poking the vision of a human being disrupts their flow. That’s what you want:

  • Imagine If You Could be Relaxing on a Beach While this Passive Income Generating Machine Makes You Money!
  • Imagine If You Could Lose All the Weight You Have Ever Wanted While Still Eating All the Foods You Enjoy!
  • Imagine If You Could Make $10,000 in Your First Month Online by Leveraging a Simple, Yet Effective Technique Which Will Stop Working in Just 2 Months!

Revealed! A “Blank” Way To “Blank” Quickly and Easily!

Let’s take some action! This headline directly starts with a kick in the mind and finishes with the speed customers want:

  • Revealed! A Piece of Cake Easy Way To Make a Profitable Website Quickly and Easily!
  • Revealed! A Stupidly Easy Way To Make Money from Instagram Quickly and Easily!
  • Revealed! A Masterful Way To Adding 10,000 Subscribers to Your List Quickly and Easily!

Here’s a “Blank” Formula that is Helping People “Blank”!

People like formulas, strategies, techniques, blueprints, and pretty much anything that is structured:

  • Here’s a Secret Formula that is Helping People Quit Their 9/5 Jobs in under a Month!
  • Here’s a Proven Formula that is Helping People Make Quick and Easy Money Online by Leveraging the Power of Social Media!
  • Here’s an Easy-to-Apply Formula that is Helping People Drive Thousands of New Unique Visitors to Their Website Every Day!

Who Else Wants “Blank”?

Right off the bat, this headline suggests that already someone is having success from using this product, service, strategy, or whatever:

  • Who Else Wants to Make a Fortune Online Without Having to Invest a Single Cent?
  • Who Else Wants A Free Book Containing a Simple Blueprint For Making a Million Dollar Blog That Has Been Proven to Work Again and Again and Again?
  • Who Else Wants a Revolutionary Tool That Will Drive Laser-Targeted Traffic to Your Website on Autopilot and Will Keep on Doing so Until You Tell it to Stop?

“Number” Little Known Ways to “Blank” that “Blank”!

Something is up with accurate numbers – people love them and can’t get enough of them. They just scream look at me and pay attention:

  • 7 Little Known Ways to Make Money from Social Media that the Online Authorities Don’t Want You to Know About!
  • 3 Little Known Ways to Lose Weight Quickly and Naturally that the Big Pharmaceutical Companies have been Keeping a Secret from You!
  • 10 Little Known Ways to Skyrocket Your Rankings on Google that the Master SEO Gurus were Afraid to Make Public, Because They Were Just Too Easy!

You can also mix up these templates to form new ones, so for example: “Revealed! 27 Little Known Ways to Create a Passive Online Income even If You are a Completely New to Online Marketing!”

Headlines in a Nutshell

Boom, boom, bang. This is how your headline should sound in your head. A combination of quick hits to your visitor’s mind. Otherwise they will run away. You have to be provocative, original, and engaging. You have to expose the big benefit you will be offering to your visitor right away. Don’t build up to anything – this isn’t a marathon, this is a sprint. It’s like trying to catch a fish with bare hands – if you are just a fraction of a seconds slower than you should be, you have missed it and it’s gone probably forever. How ungrateful. All you wanted to do was to provide some value to it, but it ran away. Will you be quicker next time?