How to Write a Direct Response Headline in Five Steps

what's up guys hope you're doing well today we're going to be talking about five steps to writing a banger direct response headline that converts okay so this can be used for sales letters vsls the first line on an advertisement if it's a Facebook ad it could be even the first line in a video script if it's a YouTube ad or a video on Facebook heck you can even use this stuff for the opening of vsls for the leads the concept Still Remains the Same but today we're going to be focusing primarily on what's the headline at the top of the page uh for wherever you're sending traffic to and I'm going to expand on

that in this video on what you should do so let's not waste any time let's get [Music] started so five steps to writing a banger direct response headline which converts by Nicholas Verge so step one get everything out of your head this is the first step the way that we do this is with something called a creative brief it's a document or framework that captures the key details you need to write effective headlines and marketing messages it focuses on the audience their problems your solution and the unique value you bring to the table okay so guys what's important is it doesn't really matter how you go about doing this I'm going to give you a template

here in a moment I'll show you it but what you need to do is get out of your head who are you talking to what's the problems they're dealing with what's the desires that these people have what's the fears that these people have who are these people what does the product do how does it do it how is it unique right like these are the type of things that you need to get out okay so I'm going to go walk you through an example creative brief this is a fairly big one that I did for a client so this is an ICP brief that I did for them so they have three different people that they're selling to so we have to take that count those are three different people so a creative brief can be an ICP brief a creative

brief could just be like a project brief like just just remove the [ __ ] word before brief and just think about it as a brief and uh you can just see that I filled this out so who are the icps right what's the cost of them staying where they are what's the number one thing they want to accomplish what are the three to five necessary steps right what's the emotional benefits that they get what are the promises they get what are the problems what's the list of problems give me all the problems that they're dealing with list them all out what's the desired situations these guys want to have what's the Gap How do they Bridget right what's their beliefs all of that okay so this is what you need to

get out of your head okay you want to get all this information out of your head before you even start writing a headline if you not have a brief together you are making the process so much harder okay you are making this intentionally difficult for yourself don't do that get it all out of your head you're going to see why here in a moment why you need to do this but this is just going to organize all the chaos here in your head of of of what to talk about with your products okay so get it all out of your head that's step one the easiest way for you to go about doing this is go take that template and plug it into chat GPT and ask chat GPT to ask

you questions that you can then tell an answer to then fill out that creative brief that's as simple as it's going to get so that's that now we move on to step two so step two is to identify your Market sophistication level so Market sophistication is a way to identify how familiar the audience is with the product or problem you're solving this is going to help determine how much explanation or innovation is needed in your headlining messaging so it's like how how much do you need to really dress it up okay and so there's five stages of Market awareness and you need to figure out your Market that you are selling to

which stage are they at so stage one is you are the first to the market okay simple direct statements like this product solves X is the best thing you can do you just say hey here's a claim okay then stage two is you are the second to Market okay now we need to highlight superiority so we have to now compete on claims so they say this product Sol X well then what we say is well here's why our solution is better than the rest essentially be why this product solves X faster okay it could be something like that then there's stage

three this is a crowded market so now a lot of people are making claims a lot of claims are going around people aren't really believing the claims as much anymore now what they're trusting is a system or some sort of mechanism that actually gets the results not just the product or the company saying that it's going to get results but rather oh this specific thing gets the results which solves this specific problem that I have right how to think about it so that's the crowded market and so this is where we introduce a new mechanism so for instance how our Gizmo 5000 solves X okay then next stage is now people have

caught up okay your competitors have caught up they see you have a mechanism and they're like well now I need a mechanism right and so now we're competing on mechanisms so how our Gizmo 8000 solves X 2,000% faster okay well it says 200 200% faster um doesn't really change it that's the same thing right we are just saying that this mechanism is better than that mechanism so it's kind of like a repeat of stage one and stage two but further down the line and the last one is they've heard it all so when they've heard it all we actually need to get them to emotionally identify with what we're saying okay and that's that

stage five this is one of the hardest markets to work with when they've heard it all um and it's kind of generic but this is really where branding comes into play and just Association we want to make them feel something okay so I would say that this is the best way to think about Market sophistication if you want to go and read further on it there's a great book that is titled breakthrough advertising by Eugene Schwarz if you want to know everything you could possibly desire about this topic Market sophistication just go buy that book it's a little expensive on Amazon you

could find PDFs of it online for free I think it's like 200 bucks on Amazon or something like that but that talks about everything so that is step two so step two just identify your Market sophistication level which one are you are you one two three four or five you choose and then we move on to step three which is to get some inspiration okay so what do I mean by this well as copywriters we have something that we like to call a swipe file okay a swipe file is where we go and find other people who have written really good headlines or other people who have made really good direct response marketing and we put in this swipe file for

inspiration for later now do we blatantly copy what they said no do we use it as inspiration now you're thinking there we go so I'm going to give you guys a resource right now that you can use for this it is called scribd.com and I'm just going to use script.com to explain this to you so this is script.com so you can see I have like titles that I've saved D but there's a lot of PDFs on here and the reason why you want it is take a look at this okay here's a OnDemand swipe file that you can get access to so here's my instant swipe file complete categorized

swipe file of hot headlines guarantees closes openings postscripts offers and much much more so you can now see the years of the headlines right so world renowned marketing expert Joe Vitalia reviews irresistible marketing secrets that have turned ordinary people step by step into millionaires right and so we could just pull some of these ones that we like which ones you know resonate with kind of the market awareness that we're at let's go back a bit let's say that we are at stage three okay so we are a bunch of people are competing but no one's introduced a mechanism okay so

when I want to go and find a mechanism I would just go and see this okay here I dare you to use these hypnotic selling secrets and not dramatically increase your traffic your sales your conversions and your business 100% guaranteed not a bad headline I like that I dare you hook right and so all we're going to do guys is just go through script there's so many different things you can just search headline direct response swipe file and lookie lookie there are so many options available for you so go UNS scribed get some

inspiration buy their stuff like 13 bucks a month I think or something like that totally worth it so go through get some inspiration we move on to step number four which is to write five headlines for your Market sophistication level so I have these gummies which are going to be our example sample product for today so I like this product I just bought this the other day I really like them it's called asystem is the brand and it has these little gummies and you can see them right here let me pull one out they like these little squares and uh they have all sorts of cool little I

don't know if you guys can even see that but they have all sorts of cool um neut Tropics in them and I've actually found that these are phenomenal for focus and so what I'm going to do is write some example ones for this product for you so let's just go ahead and and get started on that so stage one okay so we're First Market let's say that there's nobody at all in the in the uh neut Tropic Market of people that that sell that type of stuff that sell brain stuff or like let's just say supplement Market let's just say we're the first one to come up

with productivity gummies and like you know just let's just say enhancing focus with Lion's man and all this type of stuff right let's just say we're this first one to do that so we could just make a claim the gummy that supercharges your productivity naturally a delicious way to start F stay focused all day Boost energy focus and flow state with a simple gummy unlock your brain's full potential without caffeine crashes so we're just making a freaking claim here okay we're just making a claim that's it but then you move on to stage two so let's say now we're second to Market so

B system is the first one then we decided to make a system um and now we're coming to Market so now A B system is saying the gummy that's supercharges supercharges your productivity naturally I have to show that my product is superior to their product so how do I do that that clinically proven gummies that double your productivity in 30 days why n out of 10 biohackers choose these gummies over competitors the fastest acting productivity gummy feel results in under 30 minutes stop settling for generic gummies experience the next level of Focus right I think the last

one's kind of the shittiest one and again it's I'm just shooting from the hip right here right this is like random stuff but that first one clinically proven gummies that double your productivity in 30 days that's just an example of us making a better claim Now we move on to the next stage okay so stage three now okay everyone's making claims now we need to introduce a mechanism so productivity gummies powered by neuro blend technology the Breakthrough formula for laser focus right unlock Flow State with adaptogen powered Focus gummies the first producct productivity gummy to mix Lion's man and Rola for Peak mental performance

revolutionary biod delivery system ensures maximum Focus faster than ever before right so that's stage three this is a fairly crowded Market everyone is kind of making these claims we now introduce our mechanism to differentiate ourselves from everyone else then then we move on to the next stage which is stage four this is where competitors have caught up this is where we need to now introduce a better mechanism again guys it's just you just say a better version of what's already being said so now I would say NextGen Focus gummies enhanced with neuro boost for three times longer flow States the only gummy

is using microlipid delivery for Superior absorption and results New triple action formula combines adaptogens and neut Tropics for total mental Clarity introducing Ultra bio gummies engineered for fast focus and Peak energy without crashes okay right so you could see how who's at stage one the headline here is not going to work if the market is in stage four so you can see guys before we move on to stage five that if the market is in stage one stage four is not going to work they're going to be like what is that like I don't understand at all I've never even

heard of this before uh uh what the [ __ ] is microlipid delivery and and gummies and I'm kind of confused on this like the Market's not going to really know what the [ __ ] you're even saying right at this point so we have to make sure that we are using a headline that matches where the market is at so before we move on to stage five guys I just want to share with you real quick like you could see how if we're in stage one like if our Market is stage one market okay there's no one else selling to this Market we don't need to do everything from stage four but if we're in stage

four okay and the Market's in stage four we can't do stage one headlines a delicious way to stay focused all day like will that work yeah but it's going to work at a diminished rate and that's the really important thing to keep in mind guys like anything can work but we want to work with things that are going to have a higher likelihood of success and that are going to appeal more likely to our audience in our market so stage five they've heard it all appeal to emotions sluse curiosity okay so sick of gummies that overpromise and under deliver try the one that works still

searching for Focus that lasts this might finally be it are your New Tropics just a placebo what if Focus was as simple as fixing your absorption so you can see I'm kind of appealing to some emotions here here I am using curiosity by not saying everything this is where okay the market has already seen everything and whatnot so we kind of have to make them emotionally invested in what we're talking about get them to identify with what we're talking about um or you know we just have to use a lot of curiosity to get them to actually pay attention what we're talking about okay so that's stage five okay they've heard

it all they've seen it all they've seen every mechanism they don't even believe mechanisms anymore they kind of do but they kind of don't they think most of them are [ __ ] and so that is our stage five okay so now once we have identified which stage it is in we have to move on to step five which is identifying the awareness level okay so awareness focuses on the audience's familiarity with the problem the solution and your product so we have five stages of awareness as well completely unaware problem aware

solution aware product aware and most aware now this may be confusing for you you may think to yourself Nick but like what's the between this and sophistication levels great question so Market sophistication helps you understand the competitive landscape while awareness helps you determine the psychological starting point of different segments of your audience so every Market has a sophistication level but then the people inside of that market can have five different awareness levels and there's going to be different people but what you have to think about is on averages what are we seeing okay

so on average what awareness level is someone coming into your business with on average what what awareness level is the market at okay you have to think about on average could you get super complicated and sophisticated and run specific ads to specific advertorials for specific you know um specific awareness levels and you know you could do all that right with multiple different funnels like sure that book a console if you want to talk about that that's a like a complicated system that we're putting together but what you can

see here guys is that on average right your average ICP is coming in with a specific awareness level and they're also coming in they're a part of a specific Market that has a specific actual sophistication level so all we need to do is know what those two things are and we're pretty much good to write our headlines we just use inspiration from other headlines come up with our own stuff we can use chat GPT and Ai and Improvement and everything we get our list together and so let's say that we know for a fact let's just go back a bit let's say we know for a fact that we are

at stage four we're not at stage five yet but we are at stage stage four let's say that I did uh the only gummies using uh microlipid delivery for Superior absorption and results for maybe I change it and then I go the only gummy is using microlipid delivery for 300% higher absorption and results the only gummy is using microlipid delivery for Superior flow States something like I'm just coming up with [ __ ] right now and I'm just saying whatever but I would take that one headline and keep adding stuff over and over and over and over and over again I wouldn't even like say it's a final until you've done maybe

five 10 variation some people say they do hundreds before then I'm not that crazy but I would say get at least like five to 10 of them together and then pick your favorite one and that's really it guys you just have to focus on you know you're not going to resonate with everyone and good marketing does not talk to everyone it talks to a very specific person in a very specific market and so we are just going to focus on the average person that we're talking to the average ideal customer that we want coming into our business so just use this information and go write

yourself up Banger headline so hope this was useful guys I hope those resources like scrib um is useful for you uh definitely definitely check it out I'll put the creative brief down below as well but that's pretty much everything guys if you have any questions you can comment them down below happy to respond if you wanted to book a consult to get more specific with your current situation and your business you can book that down below if you'd also like to book in me doing a split test against your current Marketing System with a new vssl you can book that in down below as well so again hope you guys found this useful all the best bye now