Incorporating customer industry news into your copywriting

When you write copy for a marketing piece such as a sales letter or homepage, you can often use news from your customer's industry in your headline. A news style headline -- like you'd see at the top of a newspaper article -- delivers several advantages.

For example, perhaps there's been new legislation or regulatory changes that deeply affect your customer's industry. Use that news in your headline. By taking this approach, you create empathy by your awareness of the problems he or she is facing.

Other benefits of this headline style:

1) News headlines appear unbiased and less like traditional sales copy.
2) It can attract prospects who are normally resistant to marketing messages -- such as engineers, scientists, and technologists.
3) It can help you stand out from competitors who rely on the more common benefit-style headline.

Go through recent trade journals your customers read. Are there topics that come up again and again? This could be evidence of what's most important to your customers and a good starting point for some copywriting brainstorming.

After you read through your list of headlines, honestly ask yourself "If I was a customer, would this headline grab my attention? Would it get me to read the rest of the text?" If your answer is "no," then brainstorm some more.

Note: The news headline works best if you serve a single market. For multiple markets see my February 26 blog entry.

David Coyne
http://www.b2bcopywriter.net