You’ve written a headline. You’ve studied swipe files. And by God you are impressed with yourself. Only, it has misspellings and no punctuation and is convoluted.

The first thing your headline should do is at least make something clear. It needs to do more but at least that. And a headline needs a concept which needs a marketing or position strategy.

Start with your target and some sort of position. Then write a boring headline. It’s OK, you’re not going to show it to anyone. It’s your secret.

After you’ve written a headline ask this:

Is there any TARGET AUDIENCE BENEFIT? Not a benefit to you, a benefit for them.

Is the headline SPECIFIC? Are you isolating that benefit and communicating what it is?

Is it the same old benefit or unique? Is it a generic benefit like, “this will make you rich,” without explanation or support?

Have you given the audience a REASON to read further? In other words, is it compelling? Or is it a lifeless lump of clay. No one is inspired by a boring headline. So quit publishing them.

You want an example. I just know it.

OK, so you have this taxidermy service. And basically you stuff dead animals for a living. Despite that being a rather mundane career choice, you can turn this around. You decide to make a Taxidermy website. Naturally, you will need a portfolio of your dead but lifelike creatures to scare the life out of unsuspecting surfers but really to impress your target audience. They’re going to love it. And they need to see that they can be the guy with the furry trophy hanging on the den wall.

Who cares what the non-target thinks. They’re not going to kill anything worth stuffing anyway and are probably just looking you up to send you hate mail anyway.

So your target is hunters who want to showcase their prizes. And the goal is to pump enough testosterone appealing copy to inspire them stuff any dead animal they drag home whether it’s a squirrel or a deer with half a rack.

You want to encourage them that showcasing their prize is a manly man thing.

And your position? Your position is: “Your take home kill needs to be transformed into trophy prizes to showcase your hunting prowess.” This is where you start. No one needs to see this unless you hire a copywriter. You need to share it with those helping you build the site. That’s just your position. You turn the position into a concept and and headline to make your site appealing to hunters loaded with testosterone and wanting to prove they are manly men with tons of impressive trophies from frogs to squirrels. You can get stuffing help, after all. You want to snag customers with naked ambition!

So next is the headline. Let’s brainstorm.

Visual: Guy with his large deer kill.  

Headline: “You crouched for hours in the rain in the woods at 4am with deer urine on your boots and you finally got him. Preserve the moment forever.”

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Visual: Guy with a heck of a deer with a rack draped over his truck.

Headline: A picture alone is a woefully lame way to preserve a moment like this.

Headline: How will you have a history of your hunting days if you don’t preserve the moment?

Headline: If you don’t preserve your hunting conquests, that space will get filled up with things called curios and throw pillows.

Tag line: Preserve the moment forever. Visit John Mays Taxidermy.

Do you get the gist? You need to talk to your audience about what they care about. You need to hit that visceral nerve. Crazy example. But that’s what makes it a tolerable lesson. Now go give it a try.