What's THE most important part of your real estate website?

It's the headline.

Here's why. Your headline serves as the "advertisement" for your entire site. If it doesn't do its job, your visitors leave. You waste your money (the money you paid to attract them) and lose a potential business opportunity. In fact, I am completely confident in saying that the lack of a good headline on your real estate website can completely squash your chances of success online.

Ever heard of the "Little Blue Books?"

The Little Blue Books were basically a marketing research project of E. Haldeman-Julius back in the early and mid-1900s.

All of the 2000 available titles had a blue cover and only measured about 3X5 inches. They were in fact little blue books about anything from Shakespeare's plays to self-improvement topics.

What were they really?

A giant market research project focusing on the power of headlines. In this experiment, the title IS the headline for the book.

Here's is how it worked:

Customers received an order form on which were printed hundreds of Little Blue Book titles.  They were 5 cents a piece and you had to order 20 at a time. Total order size: $1.00. All the customer had to do was check the titles they were interested in and send in the order form. So the only decision they had to make was to choose by topic and title.

How big was the experiment? How many books did he sell? Over one hundred million of them. And after he sold them, he wrote a book about what he found. And the results are astonishing.

Here are just some examples:

"100 Best Books to Read" sold 32,000 copies.

"How to Choose Books" sold only 10,000 copies.

"How to Improve Your Conversation" sold 77,000 copies.

"The Romance of Words" only sold 10,500 copies.

"Toasts for All Occasions" sold 55,000 copies.

"Humorous Anecdotes" sold only 8,000 copies.

If you understand WHY one headline outpulled the other, you can take those same ideas and apply them directly to your real estate website.

Why did "100 Best Books to Read" title outpull "How to Choose Books?" Because it is specific and it speaks to our need to have the best, to want the best, to know what the best is. So where can you find headline ideas for you to adapt and test on your real estate website?

Consider enrolling in what I call "Junk Mail University." Tuition is paid in time and all it takes is a few minutes a day sorting the mail you probably already get.

As you go through the "junk mail" you get each day, pull out the pieces that catch your eye. The ones that make you curious to read more.

And be sure to concentrate on the big mailers -- like American Express.

The reason you get junk mail (especially from the same companies over and over again) is because it works. It makes them money. So why not benefit from their investment in the top copywriters and adapt some of their ideas for your website?

Here are some other headline tips:

1. Don't make your headline cute, catchy or clever. That might work for the big companies that have millions and millions of dollars to invest in endless repetition of their ad, but you have to make your money go farther by making your headlines much more effective.

2. Speak directly to your reader. Don't be afraid to use personal pronouns like you, etc. 

3. Make sure your headline tells the people you want to attract, exactly what you are offering.

4. Use your headline to make a promise. Then pull your visitor through your copy by telling them exactly how you will deliver on that promise.

5. Use your headline to qualify your visitor. If you are focusing on first time buyers, make sure that "First Time Buyers" is somewhere in the headline. When they read it, they'll say to themselves, "This is for me!"

6. Don't be boring. There is nothing that will turn your visitors off more quickly than a boring, bland headline that really doesn't say anything of substance.

Creating an effective headline for your real estate website is probably the quickest, most profitable improvement you can make, today, for nothing more than a few minutes of your time. 

And the benefits will pay of again and again down the road.

Jason Leister, the Real Estate Technology and Marketing Guru^TM, is owner of Computer Super Guy LLC, technology firm that helps real estate professionals use technology market their businesses. Sign-up for the free real estate technology newsletter, Prof-IT, by visiting this link.

Published: November 20, 2006

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