What’s the most important part of any sales letter?  It’s the headline!

You see, over 70% of all prospects will decide if they are going to read the rest of your sales letter – just from the headline.  If the headline doesn’t give them a strong enough reason why or catch their attention, then “poof” – they toss your marketing piece and they never call you for a massage appointment.

So how do you craft a strong headline?  Well, you can’t just throw together anything and call it a headline.

In fact, learning how to write a compelling headline or even a sales letter is a skill that can be learned.  That skill is called copywriting.

Now, as a massage therapist, you don’t have to become a professional copywriter to write better headlines.

Not at all!

You only need to write well enough to improve your marketing so it makes you more sales and stands out from your competition.

When a professional copywriter decides to create a compelling headline, they will normally spend a lot of time writing up potential headlines.  Some copywriters will start with brainstorming headlines before they even write the sales letter!  They try to find the “perfect” headline that will act as a natural introduction into the rest of the sales letter.

Other copywriters will write the sales letter first and then spend a separate brainstorming session writing potential headlines.  The biggest advantage of this way is you can focus on brainstorming headlines when you feel mentally fresh and focused.

Just choose which method you feel most comfortable with and write out as many headlines as you can think of.  Don’t worry about editing the headlines.  Just write as many of them as you can think of – as fast as you can!

Personally, I normally like to come up with headlines for sales letters last.  I’ll do an individual session of working on headlines for a sales letter.  Often I will brainstorm at least 30 different headlines…frequently it’s closer to 50 different headlines for a sales letter or marketing piece.

From that brainstorming session, I’ll choose what I feel is the best headline for the sales letter.  Then I look through the rest of the remaining possible headlines and choose anything that might be worth using as either another headline later in the sales letter or as a bullet point in the sales letter.

There have been entire books and courses written on crafting top-notch headlines but instead of telling you to go buy a book or course, I want to give you three easy to use tips that should help you write better headlines.

First, keep your headline focused on talking about one benefit of your massage service…two benefits max.

Second, add the words “How To” to the beginning of your headline.  “How to” headlines are one of the most powerful ones you can use.

Third, capitalize each word in your headline.  Studies have shown that by capitalizing each word in your major headline, it increases your response rate.

Let me give you an example.  Suppose you specialize in prenatal massage.  Your massage techniques are very successful at safely relaxing an expectant mother and relieving her stiff back.

If your technique will help mothers-to-be become more relaxed and get rid of stiff muscles then your professional skills should be of great interest to them.  By using these three tips, you come up with a headline like this:

That’s all for now.  Look for our next issue of “From The Massage Table” soon.

To Your Success,

Mike Humphreys

P.S. If you want to learn more about writing better headlines, please see my book Help Your MASSAGE Practice.  For more information about this massage practice-building book, please click here.