The headline is the most important element in any sales message your company ever uses. It is the opening sentence you use in any sales letter, brochure, print ad, or on you Web site.

The purpose of a headline is to grab your prospect’s attention. Your headline should zero in on precisely who you want to reach, your target market. For example, if you want to reach homeowners, put the word “homeowners” in the headline.

The headline should serve as the ad for your ad. It should tell the reader immediately and clearly the essence of what you’re trying to say in the body copy. The headline needs to tell people what your big benefit or promise is. Your headline should appeal to the reader or listener’s self-interest.

The two most powerful words you can use in a headline are “free” and “new.” You cannot always use “free”, but you can always use “new”, if you try hard enough. Some other powerful words to put in your headlines are: “last chance”, “revolutionary”, “just arrived”, “easy”, “announcing”, “bargain”, “compare”, “how to”, ‘last chance”, “offer.”

A good headline explains how the reader, viewer or listener can save, gain, or accomplish something beneficial through the use of your product or service. How your product or service will increase his or her financial, social, or physical well-being. Or, if you’re taking the negative track, how your product or service will decrease the prospect or customer’s chances of personal, business, or financial loss.

It is important to remember, that when you’re writing a headline, your prospect is not buying a product or a service. Your prospect is buying the result or benefit that your product or service will provide to him or her. Always focus headlines on the benefit or result that your prospect will be receiving.

A headline is most effective when you speak directly to the reader, one reader at a time. Your message must telegraph the benefits the prospect himself or herself can expect to receive. Your headline should never talk about “we” or “our.” Your headline must be written or expressed with “you”, the individual reader’s direct interests in mind.

Here are few time-tested ideas for creating great headlines:

* Feature a price in your headline.

* Tell a story.

* Feature a free offer.

* Feature a price reduction or a reduced price

* Feature easy or more attractive payment terms.

To find the headline that has the strongest pulling power, you must test them. When you run a display ad, test your headlines against each other with the exact same body copy. You can check your results by using a differently coded coupon for each version of your ad. You can also, tell the prospects in your ad to specify a department number when they call or write. Or, you can ask the prospect where he or she saw or heard about your offer.

You should also keep detailed records of your results. Keep track of every piece of information that you need in your marketing. Be sure to differentiate in your record-keeping between responses and actual sales. Prospects are great, but sales are what you want.

Once you have all the results tabulated and you have one headline that out pulled the other, then test again. This time you use the winning headline against a new headline. Always compare your new headline against your proven winner. By doing this constantly you will always be sure you are getting the optimal return on your ads.

To start writing powerful headlines, you first have to ask yourself, “What is the primary benefit that your product or service provides to a prospect or customer?” Then pick out a few of the power words that I mentioned earlier and add them to the benefit that your product or service produces.

Here are just a few of the best headlines ever written:

* How I Improved My Memory In Just One Evening

* How To Win Friends And Influence People

* You Can Laugh At Money Worries -- If You Follow This Simple Plan

* Who Else Wants A Screen Star Figure?

* Is The Life Of A Child Worth $1 To You?

Don’t limit yourself to writing a single headline. Write at least 25 or even 50 different headlines. If you get stuck, ask yourself, “If I were talking to a prospect about this benefit, I would be telling him or her how to . . . . .? Once you’ve written 25 to 50 headlines, pick out what you think are the best five and start testing them to find a winner.

Copyright©2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. He is the founder and CEO of JLM & Associates, a consulting and training organization, specializing in personal and business development. Through his seminars and lectures, Joe Love addresses thousands of men and women each year, including the executives and staffs of many of America’s largest corporations, on the subjects of leadership, self-esteem, goals, achievement, and success psychology.

Reach Joe at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Read more articles and newsletters at: http://www.jlmandassociates.com

The success of a business plan stands or falls on its ability to get potential investors to take a moment to read it. Nothing works better for doing this than well-written headlines designed to interrupt and engage investors. Here are five fundamental rules for writing and incorporating headlines into your business plan.

1. More important than anything else, try to get investors’ self-interests into every headline you write. Make your headlines suggest to investors that there is something about your business plan or venture they want. This rule seems so obvious. Yet, absent omitting headlines entirely, it is the rule most often violated. Replace overused one word headings like "Company", "Products", "Market", Financials" with headlines that appeal to investors’ self-interests like making money, protecting their investment, or building trust.
2. Be sure to get news worthy information like new products, new uses for old products, or technological breakthroughs into your headlines whenever possible.
3. Avoid “curiosity” headlines. Marketing and advertising professionals have proven through testing and experience that the effectiveness of the average curiosity headline is, at best, doubtful. For every curiosity headline that succeeds in getting an investor to read further, a dozen will fail. Instead, combine curiosity with news or self-interest to create a single, more compelling headline capable of drawing investors into your plan.
4. Take a positive angle with your headlines. Avoid headlines that paint gloomy or negative pictures of your business venture or markets. For example, if you are targeting a market with millions of suffers, emphasize in your headlines how the business venture can benefit them.
5. Demonstrate through your headlines that here is a business plan that will generate results and is backed by evidence. Let your headlines educate investors about the opportunity, risks, and the available options.

Of course it goes without saying that in using any of these rules be sure to make your headline believable. In most cases, “too good to be true” headlines will not draw experienced investors into your plan.

Mike Elia is a chief financial officer and an advisor to venture capitalists and leverage buyout specialists. His business plan ebook "Business Plan Secrets Revealed" shows how to make your business the most appealing investment choice to venture capitalist, bankers, and other business investors. For his free business plan guide visit http://www.business-plan-secrets-revealed.com/free-business-plan-guide.html