Is it possible to get a prospect to read a LOT of information about your program and school?
Maybe…if you have a headline like the one I found while tumbing through a magazine on an airplane earlier this week.
Here it is:
The headline is brilliant: “It is against international law to force prisoners of war to read this entire ad”.
The rest of the text? It’s more than 1,000 words talking about how a virus software works, and why I needed to buy it. Why did I read it all? Mainly because I was trying to figure out how they were going to tie-in the whole prisoner of war thing with the oh-so-exciting world of software utilities.
They never did. The headline stood on it’s own, and achieved it’s desired purpose: I can now tell you more than most other human beings can about software virus protection. I read the whole thing.
Here’s why this great advertising principle – and the 10 minutes of my life I sacrificed reading this two-page ad for our loyal readers – can offer some important recruiting lessons for your next series of emails or prospect letters:
We love headlines. Headlines tell us whether or not we should read something or not. Whether it’s a newspaper article or a post on the internet, we look for headlines to answer some immediate questions for us.
We like to be puzzled. The thing about the headline in the advertisement I showed you above is that it hits you out of the blue. The phrase isn’t something we read everyday, but we know enough about the subject (forcing prisoners of war to do something that’s against international law) to wonder what the rest of the small-print text says. In a world of ordinary, something out of left field really catches our attention.
The visual layout matters. Look at the two-page ad again. Notice how all the print is taking up literally the entire page? Most of the time, I’d advise against that. But the designers of this ad take “too much text” to the ridiculous extreme. It stands out because visually it breaks too many rules to ignore.
Asking the reader to take action helps it to all pay off. If the headline grabs their attention, and the layout puzzles your prospect and draws them in, you need to take advantage of their attention and ask them to take action. A call to you, and email giving you a piece of informaiton…something. “Static information”, as I refer to letters that only give a reader information and no way to get involved and take action, does very little to further the recruiting process. Ask your prospect to take action. A good headline is a start, but it’s only a small part of an effective message that resonates with your prospect.
Take a look at your letters and emails that you’ve been sending out lately. Can you find a way to add an effective headline to draw your reader in and tell your story effectively by giving them some headlines to help guide them into your message?
Knowing how to communicate with your prospect is key to effectively recruiting them. Our special research study, “Inside the Mind of Your College Prospect”, unlocks the secrets of what today’s high school prospect really want from the coach who is recruiting them – including what they want to read in letters or emails that you send them. It’s information you need to know, coach. Click here for more information.
