How to Captivate Your Customers With Irresistible Headlines

Your marketing messages won’t increase sales unless they’re read. And they will only be read if they engage your customers. But how do you accomplish this when there are so many others competing for their attention?

It all starts with the headline. Just how important are headlines in getting people to read your copy? About as important as your marketing message being able to magically move products off shelves or completely failing. It isn’t enough to craft a persuasive piece, because without an effective headline people simply won’t read it.

Here are some surefire tactics for creating attention-grabbing headlines:

• Clarity

Being clear is almost always better than being clever. You should write your headline at less than a Grade 6 reading level. Avoid jargon unless your target audience won’t take you seriously without it.

If your headline doesn’t give people the information they need in easy-to-understand language, you’re inviting them to hit the back button. Or worse, they’ll try to read the copy and get more and more frustrated trying to understand what solution you’re offering. Either way, it’s unlikely to result in a sale or love for your brand.

• WIIFM

Craft your headlines to speak to the fears, pain points, desires and emotional triggers of your reader. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask yourself, “what’s in it for me?” Think about if you had the same problem what would catch your attention?

Going to where people hang out who have the issue you’re addressing can help you get a deeper understanding of their expectations. Look at forums on the subject, along with review sites like Amazon for similar products or services to see how people talk about the problem your product solves.

• Highlight the benefit(s)

People make the majority of their decisions based on emotions, not logic. Not to mention that people are busy. This is important to keep in mind when you’re trying to get them to stay on your page.

So including the benefits early in the headline can go a long way to achieving your goal. Let your visitors know right away that you can give them what they really want.

• Headline formulas

When it comes to writing an attention-grabbing headline, why reinvent the wheel? Keep your own swipe file of proven headline formulas to get stellar results faster and easier.

Legendary copywriters like David Ogilvy, Eugene Schwartz and Gary Bencivenga wrote headlines for print ads and direct mail that are still used today. Effective headlines draw on psychological triggers that are timeless.

Even if you sell or work exclusively online, on your next trip to the grocery store check out the print magazine headlines. You’ll see that these writers are some of the best at persuading you to take action.

• A/B test

It’s important to test to find a winning headline. Even if you’ve done your research and followed a logical process, you’re forced to make some assumptions about your target audience.

Take the guesswork out of finding out what works with a simple A/B test. There are many free and cheap testing tools available now.

• Keyword research

It pays to pay attention to the keywords that bring your visitors to the page. Once you know the words they’re using to find you, you can reflect those keywords in the headline.

You can also do some preliminary research using a keyword tool. But make sure including your keyword doesn’t negatively impact conversions.

Matching your target audience’s expectations helps keeps them on the page. You don’t want to have a lot of traffic that only bounces.

Sometimes if you can’t include your keyword in the headline, you can use it in a subhead. Regardless, test your headline to see if including your keyword affects the results you want.

And there you have it. Steal these hard-hitting headline strategies to start creating the successful copywriting your product or service deserves.