How to Write Headlines That Make People Stop and Pay Attention

0:00Hello, this is Mark Satterfield and welcome to the Velvet Rope Playbook. Tonight's chapter, How to Write Headlines that Make People Stop and Pay Attention. There's an old advertising principle that is probably even more important today than it was 50 years ago. If your headline doesn't get their attention, it doesn't matter how good everything underneath it is. And today, when I say headline, I'm not just talking about the headline on an advertisement. I'm talking about the subject line of an email, the first sentence of a LinkedIn post, the title of a YouTube video, the opening words of a reel, the headline on your website, or even the title of a presentation.

0:44In every case, your first job is the same. Give me a reason to stop. The problem is that most people try to accomplish that by being clever. They sit there staring at the screen, trying to come up with something catchy. But there's actually a much easier way to do it, and it comes from studying headlines that have already proven that they can successfully capture attention. If you go back and look at some of the most famous advertising headlines ever written, you begin to notice something interesting. The products are completely different. The audiences are different. The ads may have been written decades apart.

1:23But many of the headlines are pulling the same handful of psychological lovers. One of the most famous is John Capel's headline, They laugh when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play. Now, why did that work? Because you have to know what happens next. It creates curiosity, but it also contains a transformation. Someone who is underestimated suddenly becomes impressive. David Ogilvie famously wrote, At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock. Notice that he didn't say the Rolls-Royce is an exceptionally quiet automobile. He gave you a specific detail that proves it.

2:08And then there's the classic, how I improved my memory in one evening. Simple, specific, personal, and it promises a desired result surprisingly quick. If you analyze 50 great headlines, 100 great headlines, or probably 1 ,000 of them, and I think you'll keep seeing five psychological triggers appear again and again. Trigger number one, curiosity. Your brain doesn't like an unfinished story. If I give you just enough information to make you wonder what comes next, there's a natural desire to close that gap. So, for example, suppose you're a financial advisor. instead of an email subject line that says, important retirement planning information.

2:55Try, the retirement decision I'd make very differently at 55. If you're an architect, instead of, five trends in luxury home design, try, the feature my wealthiest clients are quietly removing from their homes. If you're a consultant, instead of, how to improve your business, Try the question I ask before telling a client to spend another dollar on marketing. In each case, I've deliberately left something out. I haven't told you the decision, the feature, or the question. That missing information creates the reason to continue. But there's an important distinction here. Curiosity without relevance is clickbait.

3:41Curiosity attached to something your prospect already cares about. That's marketing. The second trigger is specificity. Compare these two headlines. How to get better results from your marketing, or three changes you can make to your website this afternoon that could bring you better prospects. The second feels more credible because I can picture what I'm going to get. Specificity can be a number, a time frame, a particular situation, an unusual detail or a clearly defined outcome. And oddly enough, the more specific you become, the less your marketing tends to sound like marketing. So instead of how to attract wealthy clients, you might say, what to say in the first 10 minutes of a conversation with an affluent prospect.

4:30Now I know exactly what I'm going to learn. The third trigger may be the most important of all, self-interest. Your prospect is constantly asking a question that they're probably never going to say out loud. What's in this for me? This is where a lot of perfectly intelligent marketing falls apart. We write headlines about ourselves rather than about the things the prospect wants. We've been serving clients for 30 years. We've developed a proprietary process. We're pleased to announce our new... None of those necessarily gives me a reason to stop. Instead, translate what you do into something the prospect actually wants.

5:13How to make a major financial decision without wondering what you overlooked. How to build the home you want without spending the next two years managing your builder. How to attract better clients without becoming a full-time content creator. Now you've entered the conversation that's already taking place in your prospect's mind. The fourth trigger is loss aversion. People don't only want to gain things, they're extremely motivated to avoid losing something they already have. That might be money, time, status, opportunities, control, or even peace of mind. Now, this gives us a very useful headline formula.

5:56Before you blank, read this. Before you retire, read this. Before you sell your company, read this. Before you renovate your home, read this. Before you change financial advisors, read this. So why is this so effective? Because the implication is that there may be something important you don't know yet, and once you make the decision, it may be difficult or expensive to undo. Another version is the question to ask before you blank. The question to ask before you hire a wealth advisor, the question to ask before you choose an architect, the question to ask before you sell your business. You aren't manufacturing fear.

6:40You're identifying the natural desire people have to avoid making an expensive mistake. And the fifth trigger is novelty. Our brains notice things that violate expectations. If your headline sounds exactly like everything else in someone's inbox or social media field, their brain can essentially categorize it without actually reading it. This is why contrast works so well. Why more marketing may be the last thing your business needs. The best sales presentation may be the one you never give. Why I sometimes tell prospects not to hire me. Each creates a tiny moment of mental friction. Wait, why would that be true?

7:26And that moment may be all you need to earn the next 30 seconds of someone's attention. So here's an exercise I suggest you try this week. Take one thing you're already planning to promote. It could be a video, an email, an article, a webinar, a lead magnet, or simply your next social media post. Don't write one headline. Write five headlines, deliberately using a different psychological trigger for each one. Let's say I'm promoting a video about getting referrals from affluent clients. I could write, curiosity, the referral question almost nobody asks their best clients. Specificity, a 12-word question that can lead to better referrals.

8:10Self-interest, how to get introduced to more of the people you actually want as clients. Loss aversion, before you ask your best client for a referral, do this first. Novelty. Stop asking your best clients for referrals. Same subject, five completely different ways into the conversation. And here's the important part. Don't automatically choose the cleverest one. Ask yourself which one creates the strongest combination of curiosity and relevance for the particular person that you're trying to reach. That's usually the winner. AI makes this exercise dramatically easier. Instead of asking chat GPT, give me 10 headlines, give it a much better assignment.

8:58Tell it, analyze 50 of the most successful advertising headlines ever written. Identify the five psychological triggers they have in common. Then create 10 headlines for, and here you describe your offer, using those same psychological triggers. Make the headlines specific, credible, curiosity-driven, and appropriate for a sophisticated audience. Avoid hype and cliches. Then don't simply copy what it gives you. Look at the results and ask, which psychological trigger is each headline using? Why does it work? How can I make it sound more like me? That's how AI becomes more than a copywriting shortcut.

9:39It becomes a way to study the underlying principles of great marketing and then apply those principles to your own business. And you can use exactly the same process for email subject lines. In fact, try asking for 10 versions based on curiosity, 10 based on specificity, and 10 based on loss-adversion. You'll suddenly have 30 very different ways to introduce exactly the same idea. So one final point. Your headline doesn't have to sell your product. That's asking it to do too much. The job of your headline is simply to sell the next 10 seconds. The subject line gets me to open the email. The headline gets me to read the first paragraph.

10:22The YouTube title gets me to click. The opening sentence gets me to listen to the next sentence. And then each piece earns the next little piece of attention. Because today, attention may be one of the most valuable things a prospective client can give you. Before you worry about getting someone to buy from you, first give them a reason to stop. And of course, getting someone to stop and pay attention is only the beginning. You still have to turn that attention into interest, trust, and ultimately a conversation about working with you. That's where your positioning, your message, your follow-up, and the rest of your marketing system all have to work together.

11:01And if you'd like some help putting all those pieces together for your own business, comment coach or visit the link that's in the bio, and I'll send you information about how you can work with me personally. This is Mark Satterfield. I hope you enjoyed this chapter of the Velvet Rope playbook. I'll be back at you soon with something new. But until then, bye for now.