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Writing and Marketing Information
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| March 04, 2015 / Newsletter 030415
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3 Reasons You Must Use Subheads
Guest post by Will Newman
Last week we had a great session in our Circle of Success Targeted
Learning Program on “Leads.” We were discussing how to fill your lead
with a feeling of urgency.
The session brought back my own memories of when I was first learning
copywriting from a well-known copywriter I’ll call “my mentor.”
I dreaded seeing my copy when my mentor returned it. He almost
invariably “bled on it.” (Those were the “good old days” before peer
reviews and CUBA reviews.) But as painful as it seemed back then, I
still learned a great deal from this process.
One lesson I learned right away was the importance of subheads.
Here’s my painful memory …
I’d written some copy for an alternative-health newsletter promotion. My
mentor returned it to me without the usual flood of red ink.
“This,” he said, “is pretty good.” (High praise from him.) I beamed
inside at his compliment. “But,” he continued grumpily, “where are the
subheads?”
I explained that when I wrote it, I didn’t think about subheads. I
didn’t know I should use them, and I didn’t know they were that
important.
My mentor didn’t exactly blow up. But he let me know that subheads were
among the most important elements in a sales letter. I nodded my head in
agreement, but in reality I still didn’t understand why.
My mentor was an outstanding and very successful copywriter. But he
wasn’t a great coach. He never really told me the “why” of anything. He
just told me to “do it.” And that was that.
Until I took the AWAI programs, I didn’t understand exactly how
important these “mini-headlines” are to promotions, be they for print or
web. The AWAI programs – and years of doing my own copywriting – taught
me why subheads are so important.
Here’s what I’ve learned over the years …
3 reasons you must use subheads …
Your reader wants his reading to be easy. That’s why you avoid big words
and long sentences (for the most part). But he also wants his reading
to look easy. Subheads provide visual breaks in your copy, so it looks
easy to read.
Take some copy – with and without subheads – and look at it from about
six feet away. Without subheads, the visual impact is a large block of
gray text. Not very inviting.
With subheads, the copy is broken up. It’s less gray looking … and decidedly more inviting.
How often to use subheads …
There’s no hard and fast rule for how often you should include a
subhead. I figure three subheads for every two printed pages of copy is a
good minimum. In the masterful copy we use as one of the examples in
the COS “Leads” intensive, Kent Komae has a subhead about every three to
four paragraphs.
But be careful not to use too many subheads. It’s perfectly okay to have
a new subhead after a single intervening paragraph. But, doing that too
often makes the copy busy looking. It can be as uninviting as long
blocks of uninterrupted copy.
It’s a sufficient reason to use subheads to break up your copy visually.
It’s sufficient … but certainly not the best reason to use subheads.
Subheads help pull your prospect to the ultimate action …
The Golden Thread of your big promise and core benefits is what
convinces your prospect to buy or act. Well-written subheads help weave
that Golden Thread throughout your copy. Taken on their own, they should
provide almost sufficient pull for your prospect to act.
Here’s how I check to see if that’s happening. After I’ve finished my
third or fourth draft, I copy all my subheads into a separate file. I
print that file and read the subheads by themselves.
I don’t expect them to make sense like the written copy does. But I
check to see if they collectively build urgency by supporting the Golden
Thread.
Okay, there’s a lot here about why and how you should use subheads. But I
haven’t given you very much about how to make them effective. We’ll
talk about that next week, when we delve into a few simple strategies
for writing strong subheads … and how to make them serve the Golden
Thread.
Until next week, keep reading … and keep writing.
Will Newman
Article Source: headhttp://www.awaionline.com/2014/01/3-reasons-you-must-use-subs/
This article appears courtesy of American Writers & Artists Inc.’s (AWAI) The Golden Thread, a free newsletter
that delivers original, no-nonsense advice on the best wealth careers,
lifestyle careers and work-at-home careers available. For a
complimentary subscription, visit http://www.awaionline.com/signup/.
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