Pre-head is the section of text above the headline on webpage or sales letter. Its job is to prequalify prospects and prepare them for the headline.

They are pain points, often in fragments, but can be a sentence.

For example, you visit a website and see “Attention Cat Owner.”

If you’re not a cat owner or planning to buy a cat this pre-head won’t mean anything to you.

But if you’re a cat owner, you’ll stop and take notice. You’re more likely to read the headline, and, if the headline captivates you you’ll continue reading.

If I go to a website and the first thing I see is a pre-head saying: “Attention fathers of teenage Kids!” It would get my attention.

Why?

Because I’m a father of two teenage kids. I’d want to know what I should be doing for my kids that I’m not doing. Or what opportunity I should be taking advantage of.

Imagine you’re the parents of an autistic child and you saw a poster with this pre-head:

“Attention, Parents of Autism Children.”

Wouldn’t you take notice? I bet you would. Your eyes would move to the headline, if they hadn’t already.

You’d want to know what new treatment were out there to help your child. What else you should be doing to help your Autism child live a normal life.

Let’s suppose we’re writing a sales page for an Anti-aging cream product.

First, we’ll write it as a sentence:

If you have skin troubles – dry skin, wrinkles, crow’s feet, creases and spots, uneven skin tone, or you just want to look 10 years younger – this is an opportunity that can change your social life.

Looking at this pre-head you’ll see it doesn’t have that attention grabbing factor as the ones above. The “If” clause has effectively reduced the impact of the pain point: dry skin, wrinkles, crow’s feet, creases and spots, uneven skin tone.

And even though the sentence has two benefits — “look 10 years younger” and “an opportunity that can change your life” — they’re buried.

Let’s rewrite it in fragments:

Having Skin Trouble? Dry Skin. Wrinkles. Crow’s Feet. Creases and Spots. Uneven Skin Tone.

Look 10 Years Younger in just 15 Weeks.

I think you’d agree this is better, right?  If you suffer from dry skin, wrinkles, crow’s feet, or any skin trouble, wouldn’t you take a look?

Here’s what I did: I started with the pain points and finished off with a benefit.

Next, we’d have the headline, the most important element in a sales letter.

To sum up, the pre-head section is the first place on your sales page where you have the chance to target the right prospect for your product or service. So write something short that grabs the reader’s initial attention.