You simply cannot afford to underestimate the importance of a great headline… According to the godfather of advertising, David Ogilvy on average 5 times as many people read headlines as read body copy.
What makes a great headline?
Short headlines pack punch
In most instances a shorter headline will pack a bigger punch than a longer one, so keep your headline as short as possible. Short headlines also have the added benefit that they incorporated into a tweet without the need to truncate or trim.
Great headlines create intrigue
Human’s are inquisitive by nature, from birth we are programmed to explore and seek conclusions. Great copywriters play on this characteristic to engage users, its no coincidence that headlines such as “10 things you didn’t know about….”, “You won’t believe what happened to…”, “How well do you know…” will typically achieve higher click-thru’s than a more literal equivalent.
A/B test your headlines
A powerful method to leverage user engagement is to A/B test headline variants and ascertain which version achieves the highest click-thrus, tools such as Simple Page Tester or WP Test Monkey work great for WordPress. More sophisticated tools such as Optimizely or Unbounce offer a more granular and platform agnostic solution.
The principle behind A/B testing is simple:
- write alternative headlines
- the software will randomly display the headline variants to users
- after the A/B test has run, a winner will be declared
- the winning variation is used (increasing visitors to your content!)
the power of a good headline should not be underestimated… write, test, try, repeat!
10 tips to make your content convert
Over a series of posts I will be sharing 10 tips that you can apply to your content to make it convert.
Tip 1 – Define your objectives
Tip 2 – Understand your audience
Tip 3 – Use the language of your customers
Tip 4 – Concentrate on headlines
Tip 5 – Anchor products into content
Tip 6 – Calls to action and triggers
Tip 7 – Visual impact
Tip 8 – Add value
Tip 9 – Never stop testing
Tip 10 – Play to win
