Are you destroying your small business with these 6 craptastic headlines?
When small business owners like you and me aren’t running around wearing giant foam animal heads, braying at the full moon and smearing our shit up the walls, we’re usually trying to come up with another excellent headline for a:
🤢 Sales page
🤢 Landing page
🤢 New service/product
<Insert other pain-in-the-ass headline jobs here>
So if you’re staring down a blinking cursor right now and wondering what to plonk in your ‘H1 header’, stick your fingers on ice for a second and read on, because I’m going to help you not sound like Marie Forloe, Amy Porterfield, Jenna Kutcher, or any of the other millionaire grifters pushing ✨MeGa KilLeR CoPyWrITiNg TeMpLAteS✨ online.
But before I walk you through the 6 (terrible) headlines I want to banish from the internet forever, I want to chuck a disclaimer on this situation real quick.
These 6 headlines suck not because they were always terrible. But because they’re now used SO frequently, the people who read our business copy online are immune to them. They are unmoved by them, indifferent to them, and do not click buttons or buy your things because of them.
The simple fact is:
Every single headline your audience reads needs to latch their attention like a Dyson sucking on a dirty rug. Every sentence they read thereafter must pull their eyes down the page with the same irresistible crumb-gobbling strength.
If you’re unsure what I mean, (or you’re keen to prove my point that most people only read headlines), here’s a scary statistic to scare you.
On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest.
As a copywriter, it’s my job to compel even the most reluctant readers to read, but it’s very hard to do that when, right now, it feels like most small business copy online has been written by the same 3 (terrible) copywriters. So I spend at least 67.5% of my client projects prying services and products out of car crash copy situations, and desperately pumping life back into them with my keyboard.
So this blog post is 1 part (aggressively) loving request to step away from nothingy headlines that kill sales (no one reading your copy = no sales), and 1 part helpful nudge towards helping you replace very boring, done-a-million-times-before headlines with better words and ideas that’ll catch attention and keep people reading.
Cool?
Let’s get into it.
1. Ready to change your life? (or any other massive ask which NO ONE is ‘ready’ to take)
Especially hate this type of question when it’s written above a button to buy a product or service because it sets the bar too damn high.
How sure are you that your service will actually change someone’s life?
If you’re a doctor about to perform open-heart surgery, then a changed life is an almost 100% guaranteed outcome for the person booking surgery.
But if you’re selling (any kind of) coaching, copy, wellness services, alternative therapy, or those smelly things filled with lavender you keep in your drawers so your undies smell nice, then be wary of massive statements that:
1️⃣ you can’t prove
2️⃣ you can’t deliver
3️⃣ will annoy me
The best remedy for this type of headline is to delete it and replace it with a question which reflects the actual result you can deliver. So if it isn’t a massive life change (it isn’t), then you could coax a click with a question like:
💥 Ready for copy that’ll 3x your click-through rate?
💥 Ready to stop using terrible clichés in your copy?
💥 Ready to stop asking people if they’re ready?
Tbh, just stop asking people if they’re ready and write copy that gets people ready to click without you having to ask if they’re ready because guess what, if they’re ready, they’re going to click. Wow. This was annoying to write. Let’s move on.
3. I’m just like you / I’ve been where you are / I was just like you
Yesterday, I saw ‘I was just like you’ emblazoned on a homepage under a picture of a perfectly made-up white woman sitting on the floor of her (long and expensive-looking) hallway with a wine glass in one hand. She was smiling like Princess Diana at that White House dinner where she danced with John Travolta.
John Travolata dancing with Princess Diana at the White House Dinner. Iconic.You know.
Regal-hidden-pain-style.
Princess Diana smiling despite being married to an absolute weasel. I gotta assume she thought this was what a breakdown looks like in the wider world?
A better photo probs would have been someone lying in bed with greasy hair, wearing crumpled, lightly sweaty pyjamas, watching their 4th True Crime documentary of the day.
But in general, it’s always tricky when we say things like ‘I was just like you’ because you haven’t got a clue who might land on your page.
Honestly.
What are the chances they’re just like you?
let me answer that for you.
Slim to none, mate.
If you want to highlight your potential client’s problem state or current challenge (the thing you solve for), then I beg you steer clear of super wanky, faux-empathetic statements.
Relating to a potential client’s challenge doesn’t have to be as literal as claiming to have the same life experience (because you probably don’t).
If your website is full of this stuff and you’re hurredly rushing to throw a tea towel of shame over your screen, then drop the towel and do this instead:
Offer a few old clients or potential new clients a coffee chat, and ask if they can spare 30 minutes to talk to you about their actual problems. Customer research is a super easy way to pick up on the challenges your copy needs to address because you’re taking the words straight from your intended audience’s collective mouth.
Here’s an example:
Say you’re a wellness coach and 4 out of 5 people you work with complain to you about stress-induced lack of sleep. This is fantastic (for your copy), because you now know you need to talk about stress and lack of sleep.
How could this turn up in your business? (Great question)
You could share a blog post or email about why a lack of sleep leads to poor well-being. You could host an online clinic where you talk about 5 foods that’ll help you sleep better. Or connect how what you do in your coaching sessions will facilitate better sleep and less stress over time.
You see what I mean?
You don’t have to struggle with the same problem your client has to be good at solving it.
All you have to do is show your audience (through your content) that you’re educated and experienced enough to provide the solution.
So a better headline might be:
😪 Let’s talk about all the ZZZ’s you’re missing
😪 Burnout: the hidden cost of sleepless nights
😪 You know what’s sexy? 8 hours of sleep (I’ll show you how to get ‘em)
4. What if I told you…
This old chestnut sets off every single alarm bell in my brain because it’s usually followed by a statement like ‘You can have it all’ or ‘You really CAN make £5,000 a month on Instagram’. And in all cases, it’s always a red flag for me because I KNOW the next section is going to be:
INTRODUCING MY 6 WEEK, 1-1 PROGRAMME: FUCK YOU, PAY ME. A SAFE SPACE FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO STOP PLAYING SMALL 💸🤑🛍️
A good rule of thumb when shopping for online services is that if it promises outrageous results, it’s usually referring to an exceptionally tiny sample of clients who have actually had consistent £5,000 months off the programme described.
It is very very difficult to replicate and achieve the type of results these people promise.
And I think that’s a crime.
If you’re dead set on using ‘what if I told you…’ then a good way to fix this offender is to pair it up with a statement that breaks with your reader’s expectations like:
⚡ What if I told you marketing your business really does suck?
⚡ What if I told you I only made £12 in June?
Ofc my fave way to deal with ‘what if i told you…’ is to delete it, but that’s neither here nor there.
5. I’m so glad you’re here
This is the most disingenuous statement you can put on a website because no one says I’m so glad you’re here in real life unless you’re waving down a passing police officer ‘cos you’ve just seen someone getting mugged at the bus stop, or you're reading this blog post 500 years ago when 'glad' was still a popular and widely used word.
If being glad is something you’re known for, by all means, rock it.
But if it isn’t something you’d ordinarily say, I’d give it a miss. Also, it’s piss poor headline copy, and no one is hanging out and reading past this statement.
This is a good (bad) example of this copy in the wild. It’s a homepage banner with the words ‘Welcome! I’m so glad you’re here’ emblazoned in purple next to a relaxed white woman walking down an empty sandy beach wearing a teal cardigan and blue jeans. We don’t know where ‘here’ is or why we’ve made this person glad, but if I see this on any website, I’m bouncing immediately. 6. Subscribe to my newsletter
Mmmm no. I’d rather eat a dirty nappy.
If your newsletter invitation is still the default ‘subscribe to my newsletter’ copy then you don’t deserve people on your mailing list.
Here’s looking at you, Lego.com:
HOW is this the newsletter copy on the actual Lego.com website?! 🤣 Respectfully, their Head of Marketing needs to fire themselves. NO ONE is filling out this form with the promise of getting "Digital Marketing Emails". Embarassing. ⬆️ This is the kind of lazy copy I combat daily.
Got a newsletter? Give me a damn good reason to give you details.
Earn my email address.
Want a good newsletter form?
Do you know how I know it’s good?
An actual paying client plagiarised it off me almost verbatim.
When I confronted them and asked them to change it, they acted utterly baffled, stopped replying and unfollowed me (all signs of innocence ofc).
Here are 2 other examples of cool newsletter copy:
I found this lead magnet gem on marketingexamples.com (one of my fave places on the internet).The cool thing about this is they’ve highlighted a MAJOR pain point for plant parents, and they’ve offered a valuable bit of content to solve it. 
Oh look, it’s copy I wrote for my client The Future Kind Collective, a company culture consultancy. The good thing about this headline is it speaks to 1 of their key client demographics (people who work in management) and explains in the copy underneath the name of the newsletter what you can expect to get and why it’s valuable to running your startup. When your headlines ain’t headlining, ask for help
If you’re feeling quite sensitive after reading this, then please allow me gently kiss you on the forehead and tell you we can fix this.
It’s what I do, It’s what I live for.
And if you’ve been following me for a while then you’ll have heard me say this 100,032 times before, but as with all the advice I share, the key is CONTEXT.
So if you’ve written an excellent sales page or social post where 1 of the above headlines is making you an absolute killing, then good for you.
But as a copywriter, it’s my job to stand on my lecturn and shake my fist at poorly communicated brand messaging, and I’d rather not leave you alone with all these bargain bucket headlines.
I want to elevate you, and everything you do, ya know?
Read this far and think you need a little headline help?
You can email me at nadia@imnadiaamer.com with the subject line PLEASE HELP ME, and I’ll get back to you. My Calendly is currently unavailable because I simply don’t have enough childcare to have an open calendar, so I’m only taking on clients privately until the end of 2024.