As a writer, I hate to admit this, but if your headline doesn’t grab the audience, they will probably never get to the body copy. The headline has one purpose — to grab the readers’ attention and lure them into your ad, direct-mail piece, article or letter.

One of the biggest mistakes some advertisers make is that their headlines don’t talk to the reader. Remember, your ad is not about your business. It’s about the customer, and how your product or service can make a difference in their world.

An effective headline technique that will help you keep the customer front and center is the one-two punch. The headline calls attention to a problem. A subhead delivers the solution. It would look something like this:

Headline: Tired of scrambling to make dinner after a long day at work?

Subhead: Let Mama’s Cooking deliver homemade favorites right to your door!

Another reliable headline technique is to open the wound. Let your headline expose your readers’ pain. Appeal to their emotions so that they recognize themselves as being in need of your product or service. Try something like:

Headline: It’s 6:13 p.m. Have you even thought about what’s for dinner yet?

If you create a headline like this, make sure your ad’s first sentence or two answers the question. You might follow this headline with: With help from Mama’s Cooking, you don’t need to. We’ll deliver homemade favorites right to your door, for pennies a serving.

Considering that a strong headline can increase readership of your ad by more than 50 percent, isn’t it worth a little extra effort to make sure you are grabbing every reader you can?

Drew McLellan is Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group and the author of “99.3 Random Acts of Marketing.” He can be reached at Drew@MclellanMarketing.com.