Do you know the one thing that all copywriting legends have in common?
They all agree it’s the most important part of your ad.
This one can make or break your advertising campaign.
It’s the headline.
“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”-David Ogilvy
The headline is what capture’s people attention and gets your ad noticed.
If you nail your headline, your chances of your ad being successful, increase.
In fact, Ogilvy argued that headlines are worth 90% of your advertising dollar.
The primary purpose of your headline is to get the first sentence read.
Joseph Sugarman calls this the slippery slope technique.
The purpose of each sentence should be to be read into the next sentence.
And, this starts with the headline.
“Your readers should be so compelled to read your copy that they cannot stop reading until they read all of it as if sliding a slippery slope.” -Joseph Sugarman
The headline starts the slippery slope followed by the sub-headline.
Each sentence builds on to the next.
In this post, I go over 3 Headline Tips That Will Explode Your Business.
A lot of copywriters follow the four U’s of headline copy.
It’s a formula that will help you write your headlines.
The four U’s of headline writing are the following:
- Your headline should be unique.
- Your headline should be ultra-specific.
- Your headline should convey a sense of urgency.
- Your headline should be useful.
It’s hard to have a headline that follows all 4 U’s, but if your headline has two of the four elements chances are that you’ll have a good headline.
1 – Use These 5 Types of Headlines
The following headlines types will work well for your copy, emails, and, blog posts:
#1 The Numbers Headline
Using numbers in your headline will make it more specific and unique.
You will often find these types of headlines on blog posts, newspapers, and magazines.
Odd numbers seem to have a higher clickthrough rate.
This headline invokes curiosity.
It can also help people solve a problem.
The structure of the headline is simple:
Number…Ways or Number…That…
- 7 Ways to Cure Writer’s Block Forever.
- 10 Signs that That Hollywood is Run By The Illuminati.
#2 The Secret of…
This is one of most used headlines in copywriting.
It works.
People love insider knowledge and learning a secret can be irresistible.
Some examples include:
- The Secret of Donald Trump’s Success In Politics.
- The Secret to Successful insider trading.
- The Secret to making your girlfriend cook for you.
#3 “How to” Headlines
One of the best ways to build authority is to teach something.
A “how to” headline can serve to teach your audience something specific.
People will trust you a lot more if they learn something from you.
It can also show the result your reader will get by reading your article.
Some examples include:
- How to build a winning Facebook Campaign in 15 minutes.
- How to use Quizzes to Triple Your Email List.
- How to Write Copy That Converts Like Crazy.
#4 What Everybody Ought to Know About
Curiosity is what drives the power of this headline.
It can also be seen as a challenge to the reader if you’re writing about a subject they know.
Some examples include:
- What Everybody Ought to Know About Email Subject Lines.
- What Everybody Ought to Know about Low Testosterone.
- What Everybody Ought to Know About WordPress.
# 5 Testimonial Headline
This headline uses your customers words to sell your product or service.
Social proof is one the pillars of influence.
Using a testimonial in your headline is a great way to add credibility to your business.
Make sure to include quotes in your headline so people will know it doesn’t come from you.
A great example is below:
2 – Use These Free Tools To Help you Write Better Headlines
Fortunately, there are a lot of tools you can use today that can help you write headlines.
Swiped
One of the best ways to write headlines is to take inspiration from the past.
Swiped.co is a treasure trove of advertising knowledge.
It contains a mix of modern and classic advertising campaigns.
It also contains different campaigns for a lot of different niches.
You can look for examples in your niche and find some successful campaigns.
Swipe Headlines
I put together a short list of headline swipes you can use in your business.
Check out the posts below:
- Swipe & Deploy These Multi-Million Dollar Earning Headlines
- Steal this Headline Swipe File to Get More Clicks from Social Media [Free Download]
- Copywriting Headlines That Sell
Headlinr
I started using this Google Chrome plugin last year and it’s helped me right some tasty headlines.
The pro version allows you to swipe and copy over 1000 of the best headlines ever created.
It’s best not to copy the headlines, instead, slightly change your headline so it can be unique.
The great thing about Headlinr is that you can copy multiple headlines in your clipboard.
You can then paste them into your notebook.
Coschedule Headline Analyzer
Coschedule has one of the best headline tools out there.
It’s clean and simple to use.
All you need to do is write your headline and Coschedule gives you a grade based on the following:
- Word Balance.
- Headline Type.
- Length Analysis.
It also previews how your headline will look on Google and in email.
Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer
Another tool you can use comes from the Advanced Marketing Institute.
This headline tool evaluates your headline based on their emotional market value.
This software was built with an algorithmic score that determines the number of EMV impact words.
EMV are words that have high, emotional impact.
They make you feel a certain way.
You enter your headline and it gives you a score and the type of people it appeals to.
I entered the headline “Do you even lift?” and I got the following result:
25 Headlines
One of the best ways to craft a perfect headline is to write 25 headlines in a row.
Some headlines will be terrible, others mediocre, and some might be great.
It’s not easy writing 25 headlines in a row.
This is an exercise that most will not do.
Upworthy created an excellent presentation on what makes things go viral.
One of the most important aspects of going viral is their headline editorial process.
A neat tool that can help you with this exercise is 25 headlines.
This tool allows you have all your headlines in one place.
It also allows you to craft headlines for your tweets and emails.
It gives you scores based on the length of your headline.
This makes it easy to know if your email subject lines are too long.
3 – Use This Headline Formula
A simple formula that you can use comes from Jeff Goins is:
Number or Trigger word + Adjective + Keyword + Promise
For example, you’re writing about making money online and instead of writing:
“How to Make Money Online”
Which is very generic, you can add:
“7 Ways To Make Money Online In 24 hours or Less”
This adds a number and a promise at the beginning and end of your subject.
Adding numbers will increase your response rate and if you deliver on your promise you’ll have a much better piece of content. .
To help you understand this formula better, here’s another example.
Let’s say your subject is email marketing.
Your headline can be:
“11 Ways Email Marketing Can 10x Your Business In 12 Months”
I added the number element in the beginning and then gave a promise at the end.
Conclusion
All the copywriting legends say the same thing.
Your headline is the most important part of your ad.
Crafting the perfect headline is hard.
It takes time and effort to write headlines.
Use these tips can you’ll have a much better chance to succeed.
What do you think of these tips?
Neil Patel from Quicksprout put together a great infographic that shows you the element of a great headline:
