Write Magnetic Headlines With These 7 Tips

I already talked a lot about head­lines. There are quite a few blog posts about them here. But here are some addi­tional tips.

There are two huge mis­takes peo­ple make when they write head­lines. Either they are too bland and don’t say enough (such as when they attempt to sim­ply sum­ma­rize), or they say too much to cover all the bases.

In both cases, you will lose readers.

1. The True Pur­pose of The Headline

The head­line is more than a mere sum­mary of the sales copy. Unlike the title of a book, for instance, it’s not meant to sum­ma­rize, encap­su­late, or intro­duce the story. And most head­lines I’ve seen seem to list all the of the great­est ben­e­fits from the copy.

No. A head­line is meant to gen­er­ate read­er­ship and pull peo­ple into the copy.

It’s the first thing that peo­ple see. Just like front-​​page head­lines of a news­pa­per are meant to sell the paper, the copy’s head­line is meant to sell peo­ple on the copy.

If a head­line does not instantly give an indi­ca­tion — i.e., an idea or hint, not the entire story — of not only what the page is all about but also the rea­sons why peo­ple should read fur­ther the moment they read it, it will actu­ally deter prospects.

In fact, head­lines that do not com­mu­ni­cate any ben­e­fit in read­ing the next para­graph, div­ing into the con­tent, or nav­i­gat­ing fur­ther into the web­site will dis­suade read­ers from read­ing more and, of course, tak­ing action on what­ever the copy is ask­ing them to do.

So the true pur­pose of a head­line is not to sum­ma­rize or adver­tise the web­site, the saleslet­ter, or the busi­ness behind it. It’s sim­ply to get peo­ple to read fur­ther. That’s it.

In adver­tis­ing par­lance, a head­line is the “ad for the ad.” For instance, a resume is not meant to land a job but to land an inter­view. A head­line is, in the same way, meant to land the reader’s atten­tion and arouse their curios­ity — not the sale.

If a head­line does not achieve this quickly, effi­ciently, and effec­tively, peo­ple will sim­ply click away, throw away the saleslet­ter, or skim over it with­out giv­ing it much thought.

You may have heard of the famous “AIDA For­mula,” which stands for, in order: Atten­tion, Inter­est, Desire, and Action. Ads must fol­low this for­mula in order to be successful.

They must first cap­ture the reader’s atten­tion, then arouse their inter­est, then increase their desire, and finally lead them to take some kind of action. In that order.

Other than “grab­bers” like pho­tos, pic­tures, graph­ics, pop-​​ups, lift­notes, and mul­ti­me­dia, the first part of the for­mula often refers to the headline.

(Look at direct mail mar­ket­ing, where lift­notes, enve­lope copy, and “lumpy mail,” where adver­tis­ers and mail­ers add trin­kets to grab people’s atten­tion and get them curious.)

But online or off, grab­bers pro­vide eye grav­ity. They are meant to draw the eyes to that most impor­tant ele­ment: the head­line. If the head­line does not com­mand enough atten­tion both effec­tively and, above all, rapidly, then the rest of the for­mula will fail…

… No mat­ter how great your copy is.

Ulti­mately, the head­line is not meant to do any­thing other than to cre­ate read­er­ship. To “grab peo­ple by the eye­balls” and pull them into the copy. Period. Enough said.

2. The Gapper

Usu­ally, there is a gap between the prospect’s prob­lem and its solu­tion — or a gap between where a per­son hap­pens to be at the moment and the future enjoy­ment of a product’s ben­e­fits. In sales, you’ve prob­a­bly heard it being called “gap analysis.”

It works because many prospects either do not know there is in fact a gap or, because it is one, try to ignore it as a result. There­fore, a head­line that either com­mu­ni­cates the pres­ence of such a gap or implies it can cause peo­ple to want to close the gap.

And the obvi­ous way to do this is to read further.

Using a head­line that imme­di­ately con­veys either a prob­lem or a poten­tial ben­e­fit not only makes the reader aware that there is a gap but also rein­forces it in the mind.

(And this doesn’t mean writ­ing all the ben­e­fits in the head­line to cover all the bases, as in the case of long, need­lessly wordy head­lines. Those long head­lines often backfire.)

Some head­lines are newsy, oth­ers are sen­sa­tional. Some make claims, oth­ers make state­ments. Some arouse curios­ity, oth­ers pro­voke con­tro­versy. Some are intrigu­ing, oth­ers are inspir­ing. Either way, it doesn’t matter.

All that mat­ters is that the head­line gets the reader to start read­ing. And if you cre­ated, com­mu­ni­cated, or, bet­ter yet, widened the gap men­tioned ear­lier, then after read­ing the head­line read­ers will want to know, by brows­ing fur­ther, how they can close that gap.

Widen­ing the gap will not only appeal to those who can imme­di­ately relate to it but also cause those peo­ple to want to close the gap even more.

Famous sales trainer Zig Ziglar said that peo­ple buy on emo­tional logic. They buy on emo­tion first but jus­tify their deci­sion with logic. So emotionally-​​charged head­lines help to widen gaps. The wider the gap is, the greater the desire to close it will be.

For instance, rather than say­ing “Lose 40 Pounds In Just 6 Weeks,” you can say, “Shed 40 Pounds Of Stub­born, Ugly Fat In Just 6 Weeks.” Or, if you pre­fer a health-​​conscious angle, say “killer fat,” “unhealthy fat,” “disease-​​causing fat,” or “life-​​shortening fat.”

3. The Pain-​​Pleasure Principle

While your copy should focus on the solu­tion rather than the prob­lem, adding a neg­a­tive (or a poten­tially neg­a­tive) sit­u­a­tion to the head­line is often more effec­tive because it appeals to stronger, deeper, more dom­i­nant emo­tions and motives.

Granted, this might seem some­what unusual or con­trary to what you have learned in the past. So in order to under­stand this, let’s take a look at how human emo­tions work.

In the late 1960s, psy­chol­o­gist Abra­ham Maslow devel­oped the hier­ar­chi­cal the­ory of human needs. In essence, Maslow stated that the foun­da­tion of all human needs is our need to sur­vive. The next one in that hier­ar­chy is our need for safety and security.

After that, it’s the need for affec­tion, to be loved, to feel a sense of belong­ing. Then, the need for atten­tion, or to feel valu­able or respected, is next. And finally is our need to outdo our­selves, to get to the next level, to achieve, to be all that we can be, etc.

The impor­tant thing is to look at this hier­ar­chy from the bot­tom up and pay closer atten­tion to the more fun­da­men­tal human needs, which are sur­vival and safety needs.

Now, another prin­ci­ple is called the “pain-​​pleasure prin­ci­ple.” It states that peo­ple want to either avoid pain or gain plea­sure. In any­thing we do, we want to either move away from pain (i.e., solve a prob­lem) or strive towards plea­sure (i.e., gain an advantage).

But when given the choice between the two, which one is stronger? Nat­u­rally, the avoid­ance of pain is the stronger motive, because our need to sur­vive and be safe takes over. The emo­tions attached to pain are far supe­rior than those attached to pleasure.

So a head­line that com­mu­ni­cates a prob­lem (i.e., a painful sit­u­a­tion they feel right now, or a poten­tially painful one that could arise with­out the ben­e­fits you offer or with­out at least read­ing the copy) will have more emo­tional impact than a plea­sur­able one.

It also instantly com­mu­ni­cates to those who asso­ciate to its mes­sage and qual­i­fies them on the spot. Thus, it iso­lates the seri­ous prospect from the curi­ous visitor.

For exam­ple, when I work with plas­tic sur­geons, rather than say­ing “Do you have wrin­kles?” I tell them to use as a head­line, “Suf­fer­ing from wrin­kles?” Prospec­tive patients who can instantly relate to the head­line will more than likely read the ad further.

They do so for two reasons.

First, the head­line appeals to those who have wrin­kles. But not all peo­ple are both­ered by them. That’s why the head­line also appeals to those who hate wrin­kles (i.e., peo­ple who have them and also want to do some­thing about them).

There­fore, think of a neg­a­tive sit­u­a­tion that is now present, or one that will occur with­out your prod­uct or ser­vice. Even bet­ter, one that will hap­pen if they don’t read your copy.

Now, some­times this pain can be implied. The impli­ca­tion can often be a lot stronger than the one spec­i­fied, because read­ers can draw up their own neg­a­tive sce­nar­ios in their heads. As a men­tor once told me, “Impli­ca­tion is more pow­er­ful than specification.”

For exam­ple, in a recent head­line split-​​test for a saleslet­ter I wrote that pro­moted a mar­riage coun­sel­ing infor­ma­tion prod­uct, the head­line “Save My Mar­riage!” won over “Stop My Divorce!” In fact, it won by a huge mar­gin. The conclusion?

My guess is, “Stop My Divorce” is a neg­a­tive, but it’s spe­cific. And the impli­ca­tion is that the prod­uct may only stop the divorce but may not nec­es­sar­ily get the rela­tion­ship back on track and stop the mar­riage from dis­in­te­grat­ing — which is the true problem.

“Save My Mar­riage!” implies so many things. And the pos­i­tive ben­e­fit is also implied — the mar­riage (i.e., the love, pas­sion, rela­tion­ship, hap­pi­ness, etc) can also be saved. Because not sav­ing those, too, can be labor-​​intense, painful, and too dif­fi­cult to bear.

(Another rea­son may be that in “Stop My Divorce!” the mes­sage might indi­cate that the divorce is immi­nent. If this was the case, peo­ple would prob­a­bly be more inter­ested in how to win in a divorce rather than stop­ping it. But I digress.)

4. The Director

Inci­den­tally, the last head­line uses another readership-​​enhancing tech­nique: it starts with a verb. Verbs direct vis­i­tors and take them by the hand. Some exam­ples include “claim,” “dis­cover,” “find,” “get,” “read,” “see,” “earn,” “visit,” “surf,” “join,” “sign up,” etc.

But go a step beyond that. Instead of plain verbs, use action words that paint vivid pic­tures in the mind. The more vivid the pic­ture is, the more com­pelling the head­line will be. (For exam­ple, “zoom past the con­fu­sion” is bet­ter than “get more clarity.”)

Ulti­mately, don’t let vis­i­tors guess what they must do or what they will get from read­ing fur­ther. You can also tell them in the head­line. Also, you don’t need to be direct. You can, in this case as well, imply what they must do.

Say you’re sell­ing an account­ing soft­ware. Rather than “Poor fis­cal man­age­ment leads to finan­cial woes,” say, “Don’t let poor fis­cal man­age­ment suck money right from your bottom-​​line.” Peo­ple can pic­ture the action of “suck­ing” more than they do “leading.”

Head­lines that com­mu­ni­cate some­thing worth read­ing will cause peo­ple to read fur­ther. But the impor­tant thing to remem­ber is, you only have a few sec­onds — if not a frac­tion of one — to con­nect with you reader. That’s why being pithy is vitally important.

Think of an “ele­va­tor speech.”

Like with a poten­tial client you’ve just met in an ele­va­tor, you only have a few sec­onds dur­ing that short ele­va­tor ride to get their atten­tion, intro­duce your­self, and make a mem­o­rable impact until you or the other per­son leaves the elevator.

So your ele­va­tor speech must be good enough and con­cise enough to cap­ture, in just a few short moments, the atten­tion and inter­est of that per­son. Head­lines are no different.

Some­times, head­lines need a lit­tle push. Just mak­ing a bland state­ment is not going to get you any­where. For exam­ple, for­get those hack­neyed intro­duc­tions, like “Hi, my name is Michel Fortin, and I’m a copy­writer. Do you need one?” Bor­ing. Bland. Busted.

Don’t just tell them who you are and what you do. Tell them what you can do for them.

But even that may not be enough. You need to com­pel your read­ers. You need to not only cap­ture their atten­tion but also keep it. You may need to shock, sur­prise, be intrigu­ing, pique their curios­ity, even be sen­sa­tional, and not just intro­duce or inform.

For exam­ple, think of the types of head­lines you see in tabloid-​​style news­pa­pers or grocery-​​line mag­a­zines, like The National Enquirer, The Globe, Cos­mopoli­tan, Van­ity Fair, Men’s Health, and more. And the rea­son is simple.

Just like the short ele­va­tor ride, the brief wait in the gro­cery check­out line is all these mag­a­zines have to work with to get your atten­tion and get you to buy their publication.

Some of the high­est paid writ­ers in the world are front-​​page head­line copyeditors!

For exam­ple, which head­line is bet­ter: “Ancient Mediter­ranean Diet Boosts Metab­o­lism”? Or a head­line, rid­ing on the buzz cre­ated by the recent movie “300,” that says “2,000-Year Old Weight­loss Diet Used By Ancient Greek War­riors Finally Unearthed”?

5. The Zie­gar­nik Effect

In 1927, Bluma Zeigar­nik, a Russ­ian psychologist’s assis­tant and one of the early con­trib­u­tors to Gestalt Psy­chol­ogy, dis­cov­ered some­thing pecu­liar. Almost by acci­dent. She found that peo­ple remem­ber unfin­ished tasks bet­ter than they do fin­ished ones.

After observ­ing wait­ers who seemed to remem­ber orders and for­get them once the food was served, she real­ized the incom­plete task cre­ated a cer­tain ten­sion, dis­com­fort, or uneasi­ness that caused the brain to “hook” onto the unfin­ished task until it was done.

You see, we have an intrin­sic need for closure.

We get a cer­tain feel­ing of dis­con­cert­ed­ness when some­thing is left unfin­ished. Often called the “Zeigar­nik Effect,” we not only remem­ber inter­rupted tasks best but also the ten­sion tends to cre­ate curios­ity to an almost excru­ci­at­ing level.

Achiev­ing clo­sure is part relief and part release. When some­thing is left unan­swered, unopened, or incom­plete, we either pas­sion­ately attempt to com­plete or close it, or feel a cer­tain dis­com­fort until it is and often go to great lengths to get it done.

In copy­writ­ing par­tic­u­larly, this ten­sion can be cre­ated in a headline.

For exam­ple, to the head­line “How to lose 30 pounds in 6 weeks,” you add “with these 7 tips,” it will push peo­ple to read fur­ther to find out what the heck those “7 tips” are.

(That’s why the head­line of one of the world’s most lucra­tive ads, “Do You Makes These Mis­takes In Eng­lish?” worked so well. Peo­ple wanted to know, “What mistakes?”)

With a head­line like “Inside Brit­ney Spears’ Divorce Set­tle­ment With Kevin Fed­er­line,” it doesn’t really open up any­thing. But with “Uncover The Shock­ing Rea­son Behind Brit­ney Spears’ Divorce,” peo­ple want to know, “what secret” or “what’s so shock­ing about it?”

In fact, mak­ing some kind of sen­sa­tional, con­tro­ver­sial, or intrigu­ing state­ment, even though it doesn’t open any­thing up in a direct sense, cre­ates ten­sion because peo­ple want to know what it is. (The “gap” men­tioned ear­lier, in this par­tic­u­lar case, is implied.)

Take, for instance, some of these other, well-​​known head­lines: “Lies, Lies, Lies.” “The Ugly Truth About Low-​​Carb Diet­ing.” Or, “What Doc­tors Don’t Want You To Know.”

(Here’s a lit­tle test: take a look at these 100 of the most suc­cess­ful head­lines, and see how many use the Zeigar­nik effect. I think you’ll be pleas­antly surprised.)

6. The Win­dow Shopper

Erro­neously, many peo­ple often look at their prospects read­ing their saleslet­ters for the first time as qual­i­fied patrons. And they tend to do so by con­sid­er­ing their vis­i­tors as being “phys­i­cally” inside the store once they read the front page…

… Par­tic­u­larly with head­lines that begin with that famil­iar word: “welcome.”

(While they may or may not be tar­geted, they’re still not qual­i­fied. They may be pre-​​qualified if they’re tar­geted. But they’re only win­dow shop­pers at this point.)

Have you ever walked by a retail store whose sign in the main win­dow said “wel­come to [store name]”? Not likely. But you’ve prob­a­bly seen such a sign upon enter­ing a store.

And there’s the prob­lem: In both cases, you had to walk inside the store first before you were greeted or wel­comed, and asked to browse fur­ther or if you needed any help.

When peo­ple read your head­line, they’re not “inside the store,” yet. They’re still out­side, win­dow shop­ping, think­ing about whether to go in or not. So there must be some­thing that gets them inter­ested in walk­ing into the store to browse or inquire further.

It could be a vari­ety of things.

It could be the dis­play in the win­dow, an out­door sign tout­ing some spe­cial, a ban­ner announc­ing a spe­cial event, a sales flyer received in the mail, or a friend herald­ing the ben­e­fits from a prod­uct she bought at — or some deal she received from — the store.

Saleslet­ters are no dif­fer­ent. A head­line is like the store’s front win­dow or entrance — peo­ple are not inside yet. And this is espe­cially true in the case of online salesletters.

Look at the web as one, colos­sal shop­ping mall.

When peo­ple surf the Inter­net, they’re brows­ing the mall, so to speak. When they hit your front page, they are only see­ing the “out­side” of your store. Your store’s window.

Think of the peo­ple read­ing your head­line as merely “win­dow shop­ping.” So your head­line must be effec­tive and effi­cient enough to instantly cap­ture their atten­tion, and com­pel them to enter your store and browse further.

Under­stand­ably, a salesperson’s abil­ity to instantly cap­ture the atten­tion of her busy and incred­i­bly pre­oc­cu­pied prospect is eas­ier in the phys­i­cal realm.

Most of all, her enthu­si­asm for, and belief in, her prod­uct are easy to con­vey in per­son. Her abil­ity to instill con­fi­dence and cre­ate trust, as well as her unique set of sales and peo­ple skills, prod­uct knowl­edge, per­son­al­ity and exper­tise, are equally advantageous.

A saleslet­ter is your sales­per­son in print.

And like a sales­per­son, a head­line must grab the reader’s atten­tion and qual­ify the reader, and it must do so by com­mu­ni­cat­ing those ideas (e.g., cred­i­bil­ity, intrigue, proof, etc) and emo­tions that empower peo­ple to at least enter the store.

The respon­si­bil­ity there­fore rests almost entirely on the words you choose. And words should appeal directly or indi­rectly to spe­cific motives — whether it’s look­ing for spe­cific prod­ucts, deals, ben­e­fits, events, relief, help, cures, or solutions.

Just like what you’d put in a store’s win­dow to draw traf­fic inside your store.

7. The Specific

One last tip. Vague­ness, unless it is intended to cre­ate curios­ity and read­er­ship by pulling peo­ple into the copy, will only con­fuse peo­ple. Avoid it like the plague.

So try to be as spe­cific as pos­si­ble. Use very spe­cific, quan­tifi­able descrip­tions. For instance, use odd, non-​​rounded num­bers instead of gen­er­al­iza­tions. Odd, non-​​rounded num­bers are more cred­i­ble and have pulled more than even or rounded numbers.

That’s why, for exam­ple, Ivory soap was mar­keted as being 99 and 44/​100% pure. If Ivory said 100%, it would not have been as believ­able. “Amaz­ing new sys­tem helped me earn $3,956.75 in 29 days!” is much more cred­i­ble than “$4,000 in 1 month!”

This tip may sound sim­ple, but it is indeed very pow­er­ful. In fact, I have found that the best claims, ben­e­fits, or head­lines, are those that have any one of three components:

1. They are quantifiable
2. They are measurable
3. They are time-​​bound

Any one of these three is bet­ter than none at all. But if you can have two or even all three com­po­nents in your head­line, the stronger and more cred­i­ble the impact will be.

I’ve cov­ered “quan­tifi­able.” But being mea­sur­able means to add a base­line against which the quan­tity can be com­pared or con­trasted. And being time-​​bound means there is a spe­cific time­frame within which the quan­tity (or ben­e­fit, prob­lem, or idea) was achieved.

For instance, if I can show you how to make “$784.22,” it may mean noth­ing. But if I tell you, “How I gen­er­ated $784.22 in just 5 min­utes,” that would be a lot more interesting.

In con­clu­sion, ask your­self: does the open­ing state­ment beg for atten­tion? Does it arouse curios­ity? Is the lan­guage easy to under­stand by that mar­ket? And does it gen­uinely reflect and cater to the needs, motives, and dom­i­nant emo­tions of my market?

Remem­ber, your head­line is your mag­net. It can pull peo­ple in or push them away.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales
• On Not Playing The Blame Game
• The Future of The Internet is Cloudy
• Carve Your Niche By Dominating One
• Can Copy And Content Commingle?

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