Capture your prospective patients' attention through your ads, website and other promotion

The first feat your promotion must achieve is to capture the attention of your potential patients. Regardless whether you promote your practice through print ads, sales letters, flyers, radio commercials, television commercials, signage websites, blogs or YouTube, your headline, or first words uttered in a commercial or video, is the most important component of your ads. The way you do this is by pushing the biggest hot buttons your potential patients have. Hot buttons include the fears, frustrations, difficulties, desires, pain and/or annoyances people possess in regards to selecting and receiving your services.

Writing headlines

There is much to know about writing headlines. Here is a quick checklist of some of the measures to take and avoid:

•	Create headlines that push hot buttons.
•	Use emotion in your headline so it impacts and impinges. Capture attention with emotion. Once you have their attention, present a logical solution.
•	Generalities fail to impinge and are rarely believed. Rather, use specifics like, “7 ways to avoid” or “The 90 second solution to...
•	Stay away from puns or trying to be cute. Double meanings create confusion, are seldom hot buttons, don’t capture attention and fail to promise solutions to perceived problems.
•	A headline should be clear in its interpretation and be able to stand alone as a meaningful statement. It should paint a picture within the minds of your audience like all of the samples included within this section.
•	Headlines don’t have to be short, as long as each word has a purpose. Never shorten a headline to sacrifice impact. For example, in the headline, “ Seven vital questions you must get thoroughly answered before choosing a pediatrician for your child”, if you remove the words vital and thoroughly, you’re cutting emotional words, thus weakening the ads ability to grab attention and impinge.
•	If you use a photo at the top of your ad or promotion, make sure your headline or sub headline makes it clear what the photo is supposed to communicate. Photos can take viewers in endless directions. You want your viewers to know exactly what your illustration is supposed to convey so it increases impact. You can also use captions to ensure this.

Once you have successfully captured their attention, you can only keep it if people believe you are going to provide useful information that will help them solve a problem and make a decision.

A few sample headlines

•	For women over 45 who want to stay healthy
•	6 reasons why people dread going to the dentist and how we solved them all
•	How much are your allergies keeping you from functioning in life?
•	Why are so many people who buy hearing aids frustrated with their performance?
•	Is there any hope of becoming pain free when chiropractors and physical therapists can't help you?
•	Is LASIK surgery truly safe?
•	Imagine never having to wait to see your physician
•	12 ways we help our patients avoid cancer

These headlines capture attention and make it possible to create copy that will involve the readers, interest them, build a case for choosing your services and get people to take action.

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