The content goes from fairly interesting to weak very quickly as you scroll through the PDF (why PDF?). It starts out with 'A outperformed because...' on the first few examples and gets to 'we have no idea why, just make sure you test' halfway through the document. If it were me I would have stopped at the last proper example and left the rest out. Quality over quantity. You'd think that a marketing agency understood that.
Also: low quality PDF rather than a normal website? Fine, you can send PDFs to people, but it makes for a poor experience. Are there viruses in that PDF?
Actually, I'm glad they did because the take away message is different.
By all mean follow all the guidelines but the only rule that really works is hindsight. So test and don't bet the house on a single very expensive headline.
It started out as presentation sides? It's better as a pdf then it would have been had it been an RSI-inducing multi-page web presentation where you're clicking next every 10 seconds.
It's a bit amusing that he misspelled his email address in the pitch at the end ("jasper@TheConverionWizards.com"). I wonder if there will be a follow-up article by The Conversion Wizards on why that particular document failed to attract new customers for their own business ;)
Looking at all this stuff feels kind of weird to me. I've been using an adblocker since forever really - I almost never see ad content on the web. I can see why this stuff works, but on some level it's kind of scary that it does.
Is there a document similar to this for blog headlines?
I just started to write a blog and have struggled coming up with good headlines. Most tend to follow the content in the blog. So if I am talking about x, y and z - the title is "x, y and z" which seems really dry.
"You won't believe what happened when these people changed from x to y" /s
While I included the /s tag, the sad truth is that these headlines would probably get you the highest number of visitors. Creating curiosity works well, maybe you can find a headline that accomplishes that without clickbait.
I'll recommend a book published in 1957 The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. Although some of the examples are dated, it takes you through a stream of consciousness about how to "stoke the hivemind"
Pay particular attention to Packard's 8 hidden needs and factor it in structuring your headlines.
Having these examples are nice, but this isn't too useful without a bit more data than that, such as click percentages. I would warn to anyone taking conclusions from this, since the differences might not be statistically significant.
Also: low quality PDF rather than a normal website? Fine, you can send PDFs to people, but it makes for a poor experience. Are there viruses in that PDF?