Writ­ing copy usu­ally involves two major things: fig­ur­ing out what to say and then how to say it.

The sec­ond part is usu­ally the eas­i­est part of my work. Why? Because fig­ur­ing out what to say is often a whole lot harder than how to say it.

Find­ing the right thing to say requires a lot of research, cre­ativ­ity, time, and, of course, “sales detec­tive work,” as my friend and top copy­writer John Carl­ton calls it.

But when I know what to write, when I fig­ured out what I’m going to say, the ques­tion I’m often asked is, “Do you start with the head­line, or do you work the head­line last?”

Let me share with you a for­mula I use. First, when I write new copy, I tend to start with the copy itself, then cre­ate the head­line and head­ers (some peo­ple call them “subheads”).

With exist­ing copy how­ever, it’s the other way around: I start with a bet­ter head­line — after read­ing the copy and ques­tion­naire replies from my clients — and then the rest.

Why? Because…

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