One of the most important skills in direct marketing is being able to create attention grabbing headlines. Marketers are always looking for a new slant or technique that allows them to pack more punch into their headlines.

Why are headlines so important? Because it has been proven that an effective headline can improve your response rate by as much as 1800%. If your response rate can increase that much with a good headline, it only makes sense to spend as much time as necessary to work on your headlines until you get the results you want.

Your headline is what draws people’s attention to your advertisement. It is their introduction to your offer and their first impression of your company. If you can’t get readers’ attention, you can’t make sales, so it is vitally important to create compelling, effective headlines. Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Appeal to greed or self interest.
The old “what’s in it for me” approach works for a reason. A good headline will cause a reader to keep on reading to find out how you will meet their needs.

2. Grab the reader’s attention.
A great way to get attention is to offer something free. The word ‘free’ gets attention fast.

3. Appeal to the reader.
Keep your headline simple, avoiding overly clever, cute or unnecessary language. Appeal to the reader to act in their own best interest by highlighting a significant benefit he or she will gain from your product or service. Keep your language and printing style simple but powerful.

4. Communicate to your niche market.
Effective advertising requires that you know your market and directly appeal to that market. This means you need to specifically target your headline to meet the needs of your niche.

5. Communicate a clear message.
You will get the best results from communicating a complete and clear message in your headline.

6. Encourage the reader to read the body of your advertisement.
Your headline should be so compelling that the reader is drawn into reading the whole of the advertisement. Tactics such as humor, intrigue or mystery have been successfully used to achieve this end.

7. Headlines should be straightforward when dealing with clear cut products.
In particular, if you are selling high interest products or offers that will cost the consumer over time, it is important that you are clear about what you are selling and the cost involved. This is not the occasion for humor, wordplay or holding back information.

8. Your sales pitch can be unique and compelling.
Creating a headline which expresses the main idea in a fresh or compelling way or with a difference, can be very effective.

9. Use your headline to announce new product information.
If your product has been improved, won an award, or if you have any other news about your product, you can use your headline to announce it.

10. “How to” headlines can attract readers to read and respond to advertisements.
When you offer to teach the reader something beneficial, offer them important information, guidance and solutions, you are likely to get an improved response rate.

11. Be provocative.
A headline which asks a provocative question or one with which the reader can empathize, will usually attract attention. When your headline is in the form of a question, make sure that it focuses on the needs and likely wants of your target audience.

12. Guide customers to take action.
Don’t leave your readers hanging. Make sure you let them know what you want them to do. Headlines that tell your readers to take specific action including ‘buy now’ are known as “command headlines.”

13. Reason with your readers.
One of the easiest and most effective methods of writing advertisements is to list the features or benefits of your product or service. You can introduce your list of benefits with a “reason why” headline.

14. Use a testimonial headline.
When your headline is in quotation marks, it grabs readers’ attention. When someone else speaks well of your business or product, it is a form of proof that customers are happy.

15. Combine Words and Graphics.
Headlines often work best with pictures because the combination creates a more powerful impact than either the words or pictures on their own.

16. Don’t be too clever for your own good.
The purpose of advertising is to educate your target market or directly sell a product or service. It is not a platform for showing off your creative talent just to provoke interest and attention.

Finally, be willing to test your headlines and let the market decide which is best. By playing around with your headlines and advertising copy, you can obtain significantly different results. Obviously, you would keep using advertisements that obtained the best results. For the same cost of advertising, your response can improve by ten times or more by simply evaluating response to changes in your ads.

When you ask someone to subscribe to receive emails from you, you are asking them to add another regular contribution to an already overwhelmed inbox. These days, to inspire someone to commit to receiving emails from you, you need to offer something significant. It is important to make it easy to sign up and communicate in an easy to understand manner. Your website needs to be easy to navigate and your opt-in mail form should be easy to fill out and submit. The most successful online businesses in electronic communication such as Google Adwords and Turbo Tax make communication with readers as smooth as possible.

You’ve no doubt heard the saying that “It’s easier said than done.” Well, if you try to make it easier for each new website visitor to subscribe, you’ll soon find out how true that is. After all, everyone is unique and different people find some things easy and other things difficult. So, it can be difficult to make things easy for everyone.

It is important to make it easy to contact you as well as to fill in and submit the opt-in form. By including a link to your company’s email address on every page of your website as well as in every promotional email, you make it easy for people to communicate. It is also a good idea to include a “send to a friend” link so that you can take advantage of viral marketing. Graphics can sometimes take a long time to load due to slow internet connections so make sure every button has a written description such as “Buy Now,” “Subscribe,” “Submit,” etc.

You can make the subscription process quicker and easier by designing your pages well with links, email IDs, contact and opt-in forms, and other information in easy to see fonts, colors and positions. Make sure every email you send has a subscribe link to encourage readers to opt-in because it is so easy and convenient to do so. Everything you require your reader to do should require as little effort as possible. In fact, in a reliable survey, it was found that when the subscription process was simplified from nine steps to only three there was a three hundred percent increase in the subscription rate.

The key to successful opt-in forms is to ask enough personal information to be able to send the most appropriate information to a subscriber while not asking for so much information that people are turned off responding. Mark the mandatory fields on your form with an asterisk with other fields clearly labeled as “optional.”

Allow someone filling the form out to make changes to their information by including a “reset” or “update” button. The registration process should also make it easy to set a password and include a link to retrieve or change the password. These links should be visible and easy to follow on the relevant website and e-newsletter pages.

When you send emails ensure that your subject line grabs attention and clearly identifies you. So that your emails can be read by most recipients use text as well as html and also include a link to the web version of your information. Printer friendly versions of your emails are best or alternatively ensure that a print friendly version can be opened via a link.

After going to so much trouble to make sure that you have created a user friendly subscription and contact process, many people make the mistake of not testing their links. When readers click on a link it is very important to your reputation that the link works. It is as important to be customer friendly in an online environment as it is face to face. This means companies do well to anticipate and respond to their readers’ needs and expectations. It is a mistake not to include an “unsubscribe” link in the emails you send because you will lose the trust of your recipients. In fact, you should make it as easy to opt out of your subscription list as it is to opt in.

New members of your downline will look to you for training and advice or assistance to help them get established in the business. They will be keen to succeed and highly motivated to learn. Here are some important tips to help you be effective in training your distributors.

The effectiveness of training sessions depends largely on the trainer. A trainer who simply stands in front of the group and delivers information without interacting with the students will not teach as well as someone who gets involved. To become a top notch trainer you will need to:

1. Create Rapport

Before the training session starts, mingle with the participants and get to know them.

By meeting attendees ahead of time and chatting with as many of them as possible, you will have broken the ice before the session begins. This will create an immediate warmth between you and your audience when you begin to train them.

Avoid sensitive topics in this ‘getting to know you’ phase, as you are trying to build rapport, not get into an argument. Stick to topics like good restaurants in the area, or traffic on the way to the venue.

2. Give More Than Expected.

If you deliver only content that is expected, you are really not giving value for money.

Make an effort to provide a more valuable and interesting experience than participants expect. Do extra research or locate additional resources that help people gain more from the experience.

You can share your own, or other people’s stories and perhaps even get the attendees themselves to share personal experiences that are relevant. You will find that you can also learn a lot by involving your audience.

Make the learning as interactive as possible. In other words, get the trainees as involved as possible. The easiest way to get their cooperation is to make the whole process fun. If you create a friendly, safe environment in which people feel comfortable getting involved, you will find people much more willing to interact.

It is also important to keep learning yourself. You can improve your training skills by attending seminars for trainers.

3. Use a Variety of Training Methods

It is important to move between different training techniques in order to keep trainees interested. Standing in front of people and lecturing them with straight information is likely to cause them to lose interest and stop paying attention because it is so boring.

Instead, use a number of training techniques that encourage interaction and move the learning forward quickly. It is important that training has a practical purpose and active learning is the best way to achieve it.

It isn’t hard to make your training sessions interesting. Here are some strategies you can use:

- role play
- group discussion
- case studies
- trainee presentations
- telling stories
- short quizzes
- fun games

Presentation aids such as Power Point presentations, video clips, audio, flip charts, posters and other training props can help convey information and keep the audience’s attention.

Adjust your approach depending on the time of day. For example, during the afternoon when people may begin to get tired, keep them alert with interactive strategies.

4. Use the Right Amount of Variety

The aim of training sessions is to give attendees the ability to actually do what they are being trained to do. This means that it is very important to reinforce learning throughout the session. A good rule of thumb is to provide three different activities for each specific topic so that learning can be reinforced.

One way you can do this is to introduce a case study with a video clip that gives a detailed view of the subject. You can then divide the participants into small groups to discuss the information and come up with some solutions to a problem. Afterwards, the groups can designate someone to present their information to other attendees.

Learning retention is significantly greater when you include group activities and multi-sensory training techniques.

5. Keep Them Interested With Surprises.

There should be no surprises for the trainer of course, because the training session should be very well planned.

However, the participants are another thing altogether. A good trainer plans to surprise the trainees.

You can surprise them by using a range of different and interesting training strategies. Participants may be aware of the course content but find the techniques new and interesting.

You can also use rewards to motivate them. Small rewards like chocolate bars, pens or notebooks can be enough of an incentive to get people involved. When you divide participants into teams during the session, you can award points to teams. This is a great way to get people excited and involved.

6. Train to The Objectives.

It is easy to get off track when you create an interactive learning environment, so it is essential that you have planned the course carefully. What are the learning objectives of the training? What topics must be covered in each session?

It is important to constantly reiterate these objectives during the course so that it stays on track.

It is common for groups to want to spend more time on topics that interest them but if you do that you will find there is insufficient time to cover the other topics in the course.

Next time you need to run a training session, apply these training strategies for the best learning outcomes. Keep in mind the rule of three as you plan and deliver the training: repetition, recall and retention.

At one time or another most of us have failed at something we have attempted. We have been unsuccessful in achieving our intended goals with varying degrees, sometimes only narrowly and sometimes by a long chalk. The good thing to come out of failure is to use such experiences to become a stronger and better person.

Are you someone who can do this to help you get where you want to be? Are you really determined to accomplish your ambitions and turn this failure into a success story? How do you go about it? Well, it can be done by adopting a positive stance and engaging in enlightening self-talk. Here are four things you can do to ensure you stay motivated at times of disappointment.

“The only way is up” or “Things can’t possibly get any worse”

Do you feel like you are on a downward spiral? Well, don’t be too hard on yourself. When emotions such as disillusionment, embarrassment, a broken heart or times of self-doubt creep upon you, you have to remember you are only human. The problems arise when you have your finger on the self destruct button due to wallowing in this state of mind. Keep telling yourself that the only way to go from here is up. Use the fact that you have failed to make you motivated into embarking on the upward climb, look your past failure straight in the eye, get over it and move on telling yourself you have the opportunity to improve the next time.

When you keep your goal in mind and envisage reaching it you will soon find you are super charged in discovering ways to develop yourself. For instance if you need to improve at school, set yourself a regular study pattern and stick to it. If promotion at work is your plan, take classes in your own time to increase the skills required for the job. It does not matter what the failed task is about, you will always be able to use it to motivate you at some time in the future.

“Should I Change Direction?”

Have you reached a bit of a stalemate situation? If so, it may be easy to put right by taking a detour and heading towards your goal from a different direction. Re-assessment is necessary if things do not go according to plan. Review your situation, and make a new plan to get you on track and around the stalemate obstacle. The route you take may be different to the original plan but if it leads you to success, it really doesn’t matter.

“This does not have to be the end of the line”

As we said at the beginning, everyone experiences failure at some time or another. However, this does not have to be the end of the line, unless, of course, you allow it to be. You have to just think, you did your best, you messed up and even though it hurts for a while, once you have done your grieving get back on the journey of achieving your goals. Tell yourself that your level of motivation will get you where you want to be, put your thoughts into actions and get on with it.