"How to Make $1000 a Day Cleaning Windows"

Headlines....

Surely the headline above got your attention. You are likely in the window cleaning business and would likely be interested in making a grand a day.

Most of us do not pull off very good headlines, in fact most just put the company name at the top of an ad. To say that is a costly mistake is a severe understatement.

You could literally be eliminating thousands upon thousands of dollars because you did not use bait to catch fish. You instead just cast out and reel in catching only those that happen to get in the way.

Even the ones you hooked are fighting to get off the line.

Whether you are writing a sales letter, postcard, flier or space ad you had better be doing all in your power to get people to read it. Your name does not inspire interest, trust me.

You don' believe me? You say people will remember your name and that's important? When they remember your name, what is it exactly they will remember? What will that cause them to do, call you someday? Not likely.

Let's use the above headline as an example. Let's say you received a flier and in big letters across the top it said-

ONSLAUGHT Marketing

I am uninspired, how do you feel? I do love seeing my name and love that everyone will see it... as it is going to the trash can. Let's look at our other option-

"How to Make $1000 a Day Cleaning Windows"

If you are a window cleaner or thinking about starting a company, would this not get you to take a gander at what the rest of the ad says? I would also imagine you do not have an aversion to making $1000 a day. Even if you thought it was probably bs you would read it just to make sure.

Would you read it? You bet your telescopic pole you would

This exact same thing can be done to homeowners or businesses. The key is to know why your customers actually hire you. You do this by asking questions like "what made you decide to hire someone to do this?". I know you are thinking "because my windows are dirty" and you would be wrong. You need to know why their windows are dirty. Why is it they have not either cleaned them or hired anyone until now. Is it a fear of heights, lack of time, aggravating results, they don't want to chip a nail?

What will surprise you is that many will hit on the same reason. If 65% of the answers were "I hate heights" you now know that is a key element that needs to be added to all of your marketing.

You will always maintain the generic, obvious use of your service, but when you hit a persons triggers they will react-

"How to Avoid Life Threatening Injuries While Spring Cleaning"

You do not need to mention what you do in a headline. In fact I advise against it. You want to pull them in first by hitting a trigger. I used pain here, people have natural aversion to pain and will avoid it at all costs.

Sometimes testing 2 different headlines is the best way to go.

To test a headline you will need to know what ad they are calling from. This is easy if you are splitting the ads geographically, but if you are using both in the same area you will need to have a code for them to tell you or have on a coupon. Just put something like GG1 on the bottom corner and ask them what is in the bottom corner.

The winner is what you run with until you create another headline to test against that.

It is important to not stray too far away from the benefit of your headline. Keep the rest of the ad moving in the same direction.

Here is some food for thought; just a decade ago we used to see around 500 ads per month, today we average 500 ads every 4 hours! The human mind is amazing isn't it. Do you know how we get through the day without our heads exploding? We totally discard all we see that is not of interest.

You likely seen thousands of ads yesterday, how many do you remember? Better yet how many got you to "order now" or to "call now". The ones that hit your triggers are the ones you get off your butt to call.

We will discuss how to continue through an ad next week. The headline alone will not get the phone to ring.

Go get some


Paul