Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Writing Powerful Headlines for your Ads.

In a previous article we talked about writing to persuade. Today I would like to look at one of, if not the most important part of your ad. This is the HEADLINE.

Your headline is the first part of the ad that your readers will see. If it is not attention getting and impressive then the rest of your ad does not get read.

This becomes even more important if you are using optin mailing lists to do your advertisement. Most likely your email ad is sent out with thousands of other ads. Your headline must stand out if you expect your email to be even opened. This is becoming more and more difficult as time goes by.

For starters your headline should build curiosity and state your STRONGEST benefit.

Let us look at an example. Consider these 4 headlines for a bathroom cleaner. Everyone knows that this is a favorite part of any housekeeper’s chores!

A. “Use this product to clean your bathroom.”

B. “The best bathroom cleaner ever!”

C. “Amazing new breakthrough in bathroom cleaning”

D. “Cuts your bathroom cleaning time in half”

Now which of these headlines grabbed your attention? Probably C and D and not A or B.

For headline A, there is simply no benefit stated.

For headline B, maybe it is a little better than A but it borders on hype. Everyone would claim the same for his or her product so why should I believe you?

For headline C, The words used are emotionally charged, get you excited and want to find out more but that’s all. No direct benefit is implied.

For headline D, the benefit is clearly stated and quantified -in half’. This is important. However the words are not as charged as in C. Probably we can combine C and D to get an even better headline to read as:
“Amazing new breakthrough cuts your bathroom cleaning time in half”

One of the best sources of good headlines is your newspaper. The writers know that this is what sells the papers and they spend much time on the headline. One of the most famous headlines ever was found some years ago in “The New York Post”. It read: “Headless man found in topless bar”.

Now I am sure that got your attention!

Look in your own email box and see what headlines catch your attention and there you have another resource you can use.

Make your headlines count!

Copyright Ray L. Edwards 2002

Ray Edwards is the author of “77 Ways To Skyrocket Your Website’s Conversion” and “The No-Click Traffic Sertect” Learn how to drive targeted traffic to your site and convert them into buyers in the quickest time. Visit http://www.raydal.com.

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