This is about writing better headlines

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Your headline's job is to get people to stop whatever they're doing, and read your copy. This means that a bad headline can ankle-tap the best copy in the world.

You might have the most persuasive, research-backed copy imaginable. It could be so good that it's basically guaranteed to get your readers to take the action you want them to take.

But if that copy is paired with a bad headline, you won't have any readers in the first place. 

And if nobody's reading your copy, nobody's doing the thing you're asking them to do. They're reading something else - something with a better headline. 

With that in mind, I'm going to share one very basic thing you can do to make your headlines more effective. 
 

Be specific

That's it. To write a headline that gets the right people to keep reading, you need to be very specific about what you have to say. 

Here's an example. The other day, I saw an ad in my local paper. It was for a company that double glazes windows. Their headline was "did you know . . .?"

That is not very specific. It doesn't give me a reason to keep reading. It doesn't really tell me anything at all! It doesn't work. 

But then, directly below that headline, was a subhead. The subhead answered the question the headline asked, with "up to 50% of heat loss is through single glazing!"

Now that's a headline. It catches the attention of anyone who wants their house to be warmer. It identifies their problem, and identifies the source of that problem. If you're shivering in a drafty house, knowing that it's just going to get worse when winter hits in a couple weeks, that headline is going to make you want to keep reading.

So all this company needed to do to improve their headline was to replace it with their subhead. 

It's not exciting, but it works

This is not an uncommon situation. Lots of companies bury their most compelling message underneath a fluffy headline. 

It's a natural mistake to make. You're looking at something you've written, and it just feels. . . kind of boring. "Did you know??" feels a lot more exciting than "50% of heat loss is through single glazing". 

And this is true - when your copy is the only thing you're looking at. 

But in reality, your copy is just one of many things clamouring for your readers' attention. The ad I mentioned above was just one out of dozens in the newspaper. An email (and its subject line) is just one out of hundreds in an inbox. And a social media ad is . . . you get the point. 

That point is, your readers aren't looking just at your copy. In fact, they're doing something else entirely. So to grab their attention away from that other thing, you need to be very clear about what you're offering and why they should care. 

Vague, cute headlines won't do this job. Those headlines don't give people enough of a reason to stop what they're doing and read whatever it is you have to say. To get peoples' attention, you need to be relevant to a problem they have. And you can't be relevant without being specific. 

So take a look at the headlines you're using right now. Are they as specific as they could be? Are they giving people a good reason to keep reading? If not, I bet you can find a good headline in the first few lines of your body copy. 

Take a look, make some changes and let me know how you get on.

Sam

PS: I wrote up some notes on Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter's famous 1979 article, "The five competitive forces that shape strategy" . Take a look to read a review, a summary and the implications his argument has on copywriting and content strategy.