Why Powerful Headlines Get the Best Results

Copywriters and marketers have been obsessing over headlines for decades. Just look at David Ogilvy’s famous quote: “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.”
This isn’t a school of thought plucked out of thin air, it’s based on extensive testing. After all, this is the man who rewrote that iconic Rolls Royce headline over 100 times before signing it off. As with any element of copywriting, headlines have a job to do. They should be designed to hook readers in, and drive results.

Cutting through the noise

Whether you’re writing an advert, sales leaflet, website article, or an e-marketing campaign, persuading your audience to read on is essential. 
Today, with an increasing barrage of content, this is more important than ever. In fact, recent research only adds to the argument for strong headlines. The MarketingSherpa Landing Page Optimisation Report back in 2011 told us that headline copy ranks in the top five elements for lead generation. And it’s said that on average 8 out of 10 people will read a headline, while only 2 in 10 will go on to read the rest of the content. That’s a good number of people lost along the way due to underwhelming, and ineffectual headlines.
Looking just at the online world, fierce competition for exposure makes the need for compelling copywriting even more real. Every day sees 500 million tweets fly around the globe, and A Day in the Internet reports a staggering 2 million blog posts each day. That’s a lot of content to contend with.
It’s realities like these that lead many copywriters to quote the 50/50 rule. With half their time dedicated purely to headline creation. And it makes sense. If you don’t want your work to fall flat, demanding instant attention from your audience is key.

How to make your headlines deliver

So how can you make sure your headline is working hard? It’s certainly an art, and even the most practiced hands (think back to Ogilvy’s Rolls Royce advert) will spend much time tweaking, rewriting, and perhaps with the right research tools, even testing them to get it right. 
Having said that, for the average marketing bod, or copywriter with limited resources, there are a few golden rules to bear in mind when crafting a great headline. 

1. Make it relevant. It has to give your target reader a sense of what the piece will tell them, and appeal on a practical level.
2. Get the audience to act. There’s no point being vague here. You want something out of this transaction. Most probably, you just need the reader to pay you some attention. So provoke a reaction and appeal to their emotions.
3. Be individual. Points are certainly rewarded for headlines that stand out. Craft the language so it not only tells a story, but also draws the eye and heightens curiosity. 

For headline geeks, there are even a couple of free online tools, like CoSchedule’s headline analyser, and the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Tool from the Advanced Marketing Institute. Both are useful little ways of playing around with what you’ve got. But there is a risk of getting too reliant on gadgets like these, and losing a sense of what you’re trying to say. Or even lurching into clickbait territory, undermining all your hard work. You know the type. “A copywriter blogged about headlines. What happened next was awful.” Or something like that.

Essential take-outs

Any copywriter will tell you, writing content or copy isn’t just a case of sitting down and throwing words onto a page. This isn’t just a ruse to get clients to pay more while they sit around playing solitaire and drinking tea. 
Crafting words takes time, and this is never truer than in the case of a headline. You can have the most beautifully written article in the world, but if it doesn’t grab people in that split second, it’s a waste of time. 
With that in mind, the essential point both copywriters and marketers need to remember, is that great copy sells. And standout, creative, targeted and effective headlines do the hardest work. 
To round off with a quote from Mr Ogilvy, “Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals.” In other words, don’t cop out on your headline. They’re worth the effort.