Personalizing your headlines to your target audience can significantly improve your sales response. You can do this by mentioning a person by name, their city, their career field, their job title, or group right in the headline. You will find this has become quite common in email marketing but should be used in other formats as well.

If you can make the person feel that you are talking directly to them you will normally win their trust which will in turn lead to a sale.

So, rather than trying to hit the broadest audience possible by making the headline of your sales letters, ads, or emails generic, break the group down into small niches and address each niche individually. This does not need to create a lot of extra work, many times it only requires changing the name of the group in the headline of your letter or ad. This can be accomplished easily with word processing or mail merge tools.

Some headline examples include (simply replace the square brackets and enclosed words with your target audience):

[firstname], Have you seen this yet? {email}

Attention [Small Business Owners]! Here's How To INSTANTLY Get All The Customers You'll Ever Want! Discover The Little Known Secrets Of Getting More Customers In A Month Than You Now Get All Year--That Your Ad Agency Will Never Tell You! {headline for a classified ad or sales letter - simply change the target market for your niche market and change 'Customers' to Clients, Patients, Recruits, Prospects, Leads, etc. to fit your target audience.}

Attention [Internet Marketers]! 'Is Your Marketing Being Attacked By Time Sucking Vampires?'

'Getting Ready To [Retire]? Hot Tips For Those About To [Retire]!' {For a travel agency this could read, 'Getting Ready To Travel? Hot Tips For Travelers!'

...or for a tighter niche market, within the travel industry, how about, 'Getting Ready To Travel Overseas? Hot Tip For Overseas Travelers!'

...or lets focus on vacation travelers with the following, 'Looking For That Great Vacation Spot? Hot Tips On The 10 Best Places To Spend Your Vacation This Year!'}

...or how about this one from the cover of Reader's Digest: 'Got Back Pain? New Cures'

Each of these headlines, personalizes the message to a specific person or group. When your reader scans the headline, if they recognize their name or a group to which they belong, they will stop and read more of what you have to say, because it applies to them.

For those who are not members of the target group, they will just move on, but that's OK, they were not going to buy whatever you had to offer anyway. So by filtering out those who are just passing through, you can more accurately target your message to, and get the attention of, those most likely to respond to your call to action, whatever that may be.

The tighter match your headline message has to your audience, the better will be your response.
About the Author: George Dodge has worked on the Internet since 1994 developing, and serving as webmaster for, numerous government and commercial websites. One of his commercial sites focusing on headline copywriting is http://www.Headline-Creator-Pro.com where you can get your copy of a headline creating software that enables you to create winning headlines quickly with push-button ease.