KEY POINTS:
Ask any copywriter how many headlines they write before they run one headline for their marketing and they'll come up with a fanciful number. Something like 75 headlines. Or 150 headlines. Or worse, 200 headlines.
So why would you need to write 200 headlines?
I'll tell you why: you don't have a clue who your audience really is.
Ooh, did I say audience? I didn't mean to say audience. Because when you start to think of your customer as an audience, you've already mucked up your headline writing.
That's because the concept of a target audience is a myth. Yet every single day, a discussion between copywriters and clients goes like this:
The writer (stupidly) asks: "Who is your target audience?"
The client (stupidly) replies: "Mothers who juggle home with a growing business."
And then (stupidly), they go about writing headlines for "young mothers who juggle home with a growing business". And this exercise seems perfectly logical, until you start to slice and dice that so-called audience.
Are we talking about Lisa? Are we talking about Aditi? Are we talking about Gulnar? Are we talking about Katie? Are we talking about Britney?
Because Britney (as in Britney Spears) is indeed juggling home with a growing - or shall we say dwindling - business. And so are Lisa, Aditi, Gulnar and Katie.
In that headline, they'd all be clumped together. That's a mistake, because while they form a tidy demographic of young mothers juggling home with a growing business, they're not at all alike.
They don't have the same problems or priorities. Yet we're off to write a headline that encompasses the lot. We're writing for 200 mothers. Is it any wonder we have to write 200 headlines?
Okay, so how do we get to write a single headline?
We dump the "target audience" concept, that's for sure. Instead we look at "target profile". Katie, let's say.
Instead of looking at every single mother who might wander into that category, we look at just one. And we see what's important to her. What does she want from life? What does she want from her business?
When we start to look at this one person, the fogginess goes away. We've stopped looking at a "fictional audience" of nameless, faceless people and are concentrating on one person. A person we know. A person we can talk to. A person we can relate to. More importantly, a person who can shoot down our headline in a millisecond.
Because we could go to Katie and ask: Would she take a 20 per cent cut in profits to spend 20 per cent more time with the kids? Would she not tolerate any cut in profit and still want to spend 20 per cent more time with the kids? Would she be quite happy to concentrate on her growing business and grow it by 20 per cent, or even 50 per cent, knowing it will be better for the kids later on?
Aha - now we aren't tramping around 200 headlines, are we?
Because Katie would tell us what she really wants. And then she'd go so far as to tell us what her specific problems are. And instead of sitting in our nice, fuzzy headline brain, we'd actually be talking to a real person, with real issues, that a million Katies would respond to.
A million Katies?
Yup, uno million. Writing a headline just for Katie seems like marketing suicide, but it's quite the opposite. Because a million mothers with the same problem will look at your headline and say: "That's me. This is exactly the service I wanted."
Weird, huh? You write for one but gain the attention of squillions of Katies. Because while the problem may be universal, the terminology that Katie uses will hit the hot buttons of squillions of mothers just like her. And when they see that "specific product or service" they'll instantly realise the "specific product or service" is just what they wanted.
Did you notice I said "specific product or service"?
Don't make the silly mistake of building your entire business around one person. You can only build one specific service or product around that person.
Why? Let's assume we took Katie into consideration, that she chose to spend 20 per cent more time with her darlings and was quite happy to take the 20 per cent pay cut as long as the business stayed steady.
Well, the Katie of 2007 isn't the Katie of 2008 or the Katie of 2009.
We see this with Steve Jobs, chief executive of Apple Computers. If you gave Steve an iPod in 2002 he'd want a completely different iPod in 2005 and quite a different one in 2007.
In effect, Steve Jobs isn't Steve Jobs. Katie isn't Katie. And your customer is not the same customer year after year.
That means you need to sit down with every one of your products and services to allocate specific target profiles.
These target profiles should be real people. If you're writing for Aditi, you should know Aditi. If you're writing for Gulnar, Gulnar had better be around. If you're creating a product or service for Steve, get Steve's input.
And then you won't need 200 headlines. Your target profile will tell you exactly what his or her problem is and how you can solve it.
And that, my friend, is the only headline you're ever going to need.
* Sean D'Souza is chief executive of Psychotactics and is an international author and trainer.
