You need to seriously look at the layout of your marketing materials.  Look at your web pages, your brochures, your emails, your handouts, your sales letters – and all of your advertisements.

Are you using subheads?

You should be.

It is easier on the eyes to have a scanning ability built in.  And subheads make it easy on the reader to find the areas that are of interest quickly.

Chances are… they will not read your sales piece from start to finish.  They will skim and scan – looking for
things that catch your eye.

And the subheads job is to guide them (by scanning) to the order page without having read the entire thing.

Good subheads can tell the story and get them to order.

Good subheads are powerful headlines in themselves.

For ex…

3 Things You Must Do Today To Improve Your Business

REVEALED! The secrets behind their success… and their fall
to lose it all.
Either of those could be an article headline, or even for a sales letter. But they can also be used to intrigue the reader as they read through your copy.

The ideal way to create subheads is to not do it.

First… list out all your features and benefits.

Next… use proven templates for headlines (like the headline formulas you can find here), and match your benefits into headlines.  Make them strong.  Write LOTS of them — up to 100, even 200 headlines for a promotion.

Some will shine through and present themselves as the PERFECT HEADLINE.

Others will still be strong, but are better suited to use throughout the copy as subheadlines.

When you are crafting subheads – put them in bold and centered. Even a font size bigger and a different font can help guide the eyes down the right path.

Another great tip is to create subheadlines so they almost tell a story in and by themselves.

For the copy scanners out there (the ones who refuse to read copy, and will only scan for things that catch their eye), this is everything they are looking for.  They can read your headline, scan your subheads, and know pretty well what the copy is about, what the offer is, and roughly how much it will cost them.

It sounds like a lot for the subheadlines to cover, but once you get some practice, it becomes much easier and fluent.

This IS the path that leads to a sale and another happy customer!