11 Sales Page Headlines Templates (plus how and when to use each one)
Asking “How do you write a good headline?” is like asking “How do you buy a good present?”
The answer depends on too many factors for an outsider to ever be able to give you a perfect response.
But— at the same time, a few of the same tips would apply, like:
Keep the person and their likes/dislikes front of mind.
Make it personal, rather than bland, generic, or trendy without a point.
Tailor the gift to the occasion and your relationship to the person you’re gifting to.
Depending on your love language, you may or may not place a lot of importance on giving or getting good gifts…
(I love ‘em, but am also incredibly hard to buy for. 😬#pickyTaurus #sorryhusband)
But there’s little debate among online marketers that getting your headline right is a pretty big deal:
Copywriting legend David Ogilvy famously said:
Image source: Adspresso
Meanwhile, SEO people will tell you a good headline can help improve your search rankings by decreasing your bounce rate.
And pretty much everyone on the interwebs has heard the claim that people these days have the attention spans of goldfish (a statement I generally disagree with, but that’s a discussion for another time).
As a copywriter, here’s my take on why a captivating headline can make or break your sales page—
Ogilvy’s right.
Because your headline appears in your hero section, it’s the first thing your visitors see, and therefore the piece of copy with the biggest impact.
If anything on your page is going to get read, it’s your headline.
The SEO people are right.
If your headline resonates with your reader, you’ve confirmed that they’re in the right place.
The goldfish people are wrong.
People will read for aaaages when the content is interesting, informative and relevant to their lives.
If you can convince them you can answer their question, satisfy their curiosity, or help them solve a mystery—that’s how you keep them reading.
And keeping them reading is your headline’s only job.
(It’s also your sub-header’s only job… And your body copy’s only job.)
Until you get to your offer, all of your copy is striving to keep your reader engaged and intrigued.
When I do my Free Copy Reviews, failure to use the headline effectively is one of the most common mistakes I see.
All too often, business owners are losing potential customers in the top 10% of their page because they’re using their headline to:
Make a vague generic promise
Be cute instead of clever
Simply state the name of their program
Say something boring
or
Talk about themselves or their product instead of their prospect.
If you’re doing any one of these 5 things and people are still buying your product or booking a call through your sales page, consider yourself lucky… And imagine how much higher your conversion rate could be if you re-write your headline using the sales page headline tips below…
FYI-- I go into more detail on how to write a sales page in my free guide: The “What hurts?” Framework: The Simple Way to Write a Sales Page that Converts.
It gives you the questions you need to answer, sales page best practices, and the simple, non-sleazy framework I recommend to help you structure your sales page as you write.
Before you check out these headline writing tips—let alone put them into action…
There are a few questions you need to be able to answer about the readers you’re addressing on your sales page:
Who are they? That is, what words do they use to describe themselves?
What problem does your offer solve for them in the short-term?
What are the most annoying ways that problem manifests itself in their day-to-day lives?
What are the long-term benefits of solving that problem (aka their big-picture desires rel. to your offer)?
and
What are the immediate benefits of solving that problem (aka the short-term wins they can’t wait to experience)?
How do you find this stuff out?
Ideally, you ask your current and ideal clients directly.
Other options include sending a one-time survey to your list, routinely asking new subscribers to answer a few relevant Qs, and mining your testimonials for recurrent themes.
Out in the wild, you can find the words your ideal clients are using by lurking, screen-shotting, and generally doing good detective work in relevant FB groups, Reddit threads, and other online communities where your audience spends their time.
This insight into the words your ideal clients actually use will give you the input you need to use the headline templates I share below.
A final quick note about the answers to those questions before I go on:
The reason that doing this Voice of Customer research is so important is this…
The best copy is written in the words your ideal clients actually use when they’re speaking about their problems.
Their words.
Not your words.
Not the words your peers use.
Not the words your coaches use.
Not the words you made up while you were journalling about what your ideal biz would look like.
Their words.
Need to hear it from someone else?
You don’t just sit down and have inspiration flow out of your fingers. We’re not penning the next Harry Potter here. Copy is never written. It’s assembled.
— Eugene Schwartz, via Joel Klettke on the GetUplift blog“…the most compelling and effective marketing copy comes from audience language, not copywriter brains.” — Benjamin Elias on the Active Campaign blog
OK?
OK.
Moving on.
Once you know those things about your ideal clients, there are a few different angles you can use to write your sales page headline.
How do you know which one you should use?
Like the gift analogy above, that depends on a few factors that only you can know:
Where is the traffic to this page coming from?
How much do they know about their problem, the different solutions that are open to them, or your offer itself?
How much contact have they had with you?
If you’re guessing at the answers to any or all of the above, ask yourself this Q:
What does your audience care most about at the moment they’re landing on your page?
Unless they’re arriving on this page hot off your webinar—odds are your readers are much more focused on their pain and the impact it’s having on their lives than they are on you and what your product can do for them.
(Our pain is typically more important to us than any particular solution—as long as it does the job.)
The answers to the questions above will help you figure out your readers’ Stage of Awareness.
This core copywriting concept, developed by Eugene Schwartz (which I write more about here, and you can learn more about in general here and here), helps you understand how much your reader knows about you, your competitors, and your specific offer—plus, how ready they are to act.
As a result, you can figure out what kind of headline will hook them.
Basically, you can break it down as follows:
** Since unaware prospects have the farthest to go before they’re ready to buy, they’re the hardest to sell to, and definitely not your target audience if you’re selling a high-ticket item on a sales page.
Why is it always a good idea to lead with the pain when you write your sales page headline?
First of all, if you’re not sure what Stage of Awareness your readers are in – or if they’re a mix – your safest bet is to take them back to what their problem feels like and why it’s worth their time to solve it now.
Secondly, as I said above, your readers’ pain is familiar to them.
Your product is not.
It’s your sales page’s job to change that…
But first you’ve got to draw them in.
And that’s what your headline is here for.
Finally, even if your reader is Product Aware or Most Aware…
…even if they have read all the emails you sent out for your last 3 launches…
…even if they’ve bought all your competitors’ offers before…
When you remind them of the pain they want to solve – and poke at the wound a little bit to remind them how it hurts and what impact it has on their lives – you renew their motivation for changing in the first place.
Which not only helps them by making it more likely they’ll help themselves…
But also increases the likelihood they’ll be motivated to click that “Buy” button.
So, by this point you know:
→ Why your headline is important
→ What not to do in your headline (that is, the 5 most common headline mistakes and how not to make them)
→ What you need to know about your ideal clients before you write a word (plus where to find that intel)
and
→ How your readers’ Stage of Awareness determines what your headline hook should be
...which means you’re ready to take the sales page headline templates I’m about to share and put them to good use on the sales page for your online course or high-end offer.
None of these templates are written in stone, so feel free to tweak, adapt and sculpt them to fit your needs.
Combine them, shorten them, extend them with a callout to your audience—feel free to play around, as long as you promise me that you’ll:
Be as specific as possible—no vague promises or made up terms allowed.
Choose CLEAR over clever, every. time.
Make your headline work harder than just stating your name or the name of your offer
Create tension/excitement/curiosity by referring to high-stakes moments in your readers’ lives
Talk about your reader instead of talking about yourself/your program (using “you” and “your”, not “I” and “me”)
The templates I’ve listed under the more advanced Stages of Awareness can also be modified to work for earlier stages by removing the references to your offer or other solutions.
Ready to get writing?
Your sales page headline templates are below ↓
The Mad Libs-Style
Sales Page Headline Templates
Headlines to use when your reader is Problem Aware
Ready to stop [most annoying symptom of problem] and start [desired result of solution]?
What if you could [short-term benefit] and [long-term benefit]—without ever [annoying symptom of problem] again?
“Quote describing the worst manifestation of their pain”
“Quote describing the most delightful effect of solving their problem”
Headlines to use when your reader is Solution Aware
Imagine if you could [desired result of solution]—without [annoying symptom of problem]...
You shouldn’t have to [pain rel. to using other solution] to [achieve desired result]
What if you could [achieve desired result] without [annoying result of choosing other solution]?
Headlines to use when your reader is Product Aware:**
Imagine if you could [desired result of solution]—without [annoying result of choosing a competitor’s offer]...
Introducing [Name of Offer]You deserve a [product category] that [gets them their desired result]
Get [desired result] [comparison to other solutions] with [Name of Offer]
Headlines to use when your reader is Most Aware:**
[Name of Offer]: The only [product category] that lets you [long-term benefit] and [short-term benefit]—without [3 annoying symptoms of problem]
** When you’re sure that your reader is Product Aware or Most Aware, you can get away with using your value proposition in your headline. But! You still need to ask yourself if that’s what your audience cares about most.
Just want the sales page headline templates in a format you can bookmark and come back to whenever you sit down to write?
Made you a sweet little PDF for that specific purpose: Click here to grab yours.
Grab The Sales Page Power Hour to get your hands on:
My RCA Sales Page Flow (incl. a Google doc template that makes it easier than ever to make my flow your own)
My system for repurposing your sales page content— without sacrificing freshness or platform relevance
A pre-publication sales page checklist that covers your copy, your design & your tech (and so much more!)