What’s the most impor­tant part in copy­writ­ing? Is it the head­line? The bul­lets? The ben­e­fits? The tes­ti­mo­ni­als? The guar­an­tee? The offer?

Nope.

While all impor­tant, none of these are as impor­tant as this sin­gle yet pow­er­ful ele­ment. It trumps all the oth­ers by a long­shot, and it’s the one ele­ment all copy must absolutely have to suc­ceed. Once I tell you what it is, you’re going to smack your head and say, “Of course!”

But, it’s not what you think — at least, not in the way you think…

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“Suc­cess is sim­ply a mat­ter of luck. Ask any fail­ure.“
– Earl Wilson

Goals prop­erly aligned will give you an impelling momen­tum that, like a snow­ball rolling down a snow cov­ered hill, increases in size and speed along the way. The more you work on your pri­or­i­ties, the more moti­vated you will become and the more timely the results you will pro­duce. They will increase and keep on increasing.

Pam Lon­tos once wrote, “Momen­tum cre­ates more momen­tum as moti­va­tion actu­ally feeds on itself.” Each lit­tle suc­cess achieved will increase your self-​​esteem, your effec­tive­ness, and of course, your efficiency.

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“Strong lives are moti­vated by dynamic pur­poses.“
– Ken­neth Hildebrand

While sta­tis­tics prove that 90% of heart attacks hap­pen on Mon­day morn­ings, it goes to show that moti­va­tion doesn’t come from work. In real­ity, most peo­ple find them­selves work­ing in jobs they hate.

Some wake up in the morn­ing feel­ing lethar­gic and hit the snooze but­ton one too many times. Some work only “for the week­end” and take more time to pre­pare their vaca­tions than they do their own lives. And some who become “worka­holics” end up work­ing them­selves either out of a job or into a grave. In short, get­ting moti­vated by one’s work is impos­si­ble. In fact, get­ting moti­vated by any­thing out­side of one­self is impossible.

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“We are at our very best, and we are hap­pi­est, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the jour­ney toward the goal we’ve estab­lished for our­selves. It gives mean­ing to our time off and com­fort to our sleep. It makes every­thing else in life so won­der­ful, so worth­while.“
–Earl Nightin­gale

“Suc­cess is a jour­ney… Not a des­ti­na­tion.“
–Ben Sweet­land

Goal achieve­ment is con­sid­ered by some to be suc­cess, for it is true that suc­cess is defined by the achieve­ment of a desired objec­tive. But you may have noticed that I like to use words such as “poten­tial,” “align­ment,” or “suc­cess­ful­ness” to describe this true suc­cess to which I am refer­ring. As you can under­stand, goals are per­sonal and suc­cess is rel­a­tive to the individual.

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“What’s money? A man is a suc­cess if he gets up in the morn­ing and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.“
– Bob Dylan

“There is only one suc­cess: To be able to live your life in your own way.“
– Christo­pher Morley

In truth, when one seeks an exter­nal form of suc­cess, what a per­son truly seeks is its essence such as hap­pi­ness, peace of mind, a sense of ful­fill­ment, and so on. What is suc­cess with­out any of these anyway?

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So, if you’re fol­low­ing the com­mand­ments, you should now have a unique name, pos­si­bly a tagline, and estab­lished your­self as the first or leader in your unique cat­e­gory. What about the ser­vice or prod­uct you offer? Do you offer an extra­or­di­nary prod­uct or ser­vice, or do you offer an ordi­nary one?

Even if the ser­vice you pro­vide is cus­tom­ary, tra­di­tional, and prob­a­bly offered by your com­pe­ti­tion, you should make it appear unique just as well.

Remem­ber that per­cep­tion is more pow­er­ful than truth. You don’t need to empha­size that your prod­uct or ser­vice is unique, bet­ter than the com­pe­ti­tion, or even the best for that mat­ter. Doing so by declar­ing that it is can some­times be worse than not say­ing any­thing at all, and the rea­son for that is that it makes your self-​​serving claim appear sus­pect or exaggerated.

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I’m up for a challenge.

Just recently, my friend and SEO blog­ging expert Andy Beard posted an arti­cle about an inter­est­ing case study.

After sim­ply reword­ing the head­line of a blog post, John Wes­ley lit­er­ally mul­ti­plied his traf­fic to one of his blog posts by 10 times.

With the same post!

In other words, noth­ing was changed except for the head­line. The arti­cle was exactly the same, word for word. But by chang­ing the head­line slightly, the blog post drew a ton of traf­fic, par­tic­u­larly from social net­work­ing sites.

Well, now’s your chance to have me do the same thing for you — and learn a thing or two, too. Here’s how. Let me rewire one of your own head­lines for max­i­mum sell­ing power. But there’s a catch…

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