If you’ve not yet read the Sotheby’s article from 2 weeks ago, here is the link. I got some great feedback from a few of you. Since this newsletter has 37 subscribers, that makes it a raving success, haha! But in all seriousness, I may do a few more company deep dives like that one in the near future. Now on to today’s article:

Why I suck at writing headlines

One of the most important things marketers do is write copy. Future customers’ first come into contact with an ad, PR piece or email. Sometimes all a customer sees is the headline before they make a decision on whether to investigate your offer further or move on.

Yet as marketers, we often spend surprisingly little time on the headline despite it being a major factor in whether a prospect reads further. In fact, the headline is often an afterthought that is hastily brainstormed and decided on after the body has been written.

I’m guilty of all of the above as I spend way too much time thinking about the topic and angle of the article. I’m definitely not a master of headlines, but I’ve learned a thing or two in the last decade and put together my experience on the topic as well as a few cool examples of great headlines.

Your audience is much smaller than you think

It doesn’t matter what you write or where you’re publishing your content, you'll have an audience and will need to consider what your audience is interested in to write a successful headline.

But your audience does not consist of every single person reading your content. You can't please everyone and so will have to pick a segment that you want to focus on. Let’s say you're writing an article for your website that people will land on from a search engine. You’re only going to write for a subset of that audience who may actually be interested in your product or offering. The vast majority of the people are likely going to exit your site because they were looking for something else or didn't connect with your opening headline. That's totally fine.

When I write a response to a 1-star review of our service, my audience is the group of prospective customers who are browsing our profile, not the actual reviewer. So that’s who I have in mind when I respond to those reviews. The customer service team will be the ones who’ll try to do their best to address the reviewers problems in a non-public forum.

So when you write your email, essay, article or ad. Think about who it is you’re writing about and what is going through their mind when they come across your headline. What topic, angle and words will get them to read on or click/tap to see more?

Your audience can be your most helpful aide and your biggest sceptic

Does your audience know you or your brand? A cold audience who has never heard of your brand needs to be approached differently to a warm or hot audience who are familiar with what you offer.

If they've never heard of you and the headline doesn't interest them, they'll probably just delete your email or ignore your ad. Whereas if they know your brand or content, they will definitely be more likely to read on.

For a cold audience, I like going for something that piques their curiosity or snaps them out of their routine.

Headlines that are outrageous, intriguing or surprising work well. Sometimes a counterintuitive angle works well where you're dispelling a long-held belief the audience has.

Claude Hopkins in his excellent book "Scientific Advertising" says the following about letter writing:

Back in 1923 when the book was written, prospecting via cold letters was a lot more common than it is today. But the learnings still hold true nearly 100 years later.

Make your audience curious, tease them with your headline and get them to continue reading your content to lead them to the answer they yearn for.

Just make sure that your article can deliver what it promises in the headline. Otherwise, you’ll get a disappointed reader and are unlikely to gain a customer.

Now let's have a look at a few examples of great headlines:

Rolls Royce Ad - 1958

This ad is one of the greats. Even today, the headline is descriptive and evokes a certain kind of quality about the Rolls Royce. Most importantly, it gets me to want to read the blurb below. Take the headline out and this could easily work in an email too.

Apparently, David Olgivy spent three months understanding the Rolls Royce and thinking about how he could advertise it. If you ask me, that's 3 months well spent!

VW Lemon Ad - 1960

Another car ad from the same era. This is also a great counterintuitive headline. When reading the ad, the question I have is why VW is calling its car a lemon? The body content answers the question perfectly while describing VW’s quality assurance.

Correction emails: "We messed up"

I've experienced these first hand at different companies. These type of emails drive very high open rates. People love a bit of schadenfreude and want to know what you messed up. Although you can't do these all the time, I've seen some people game it by "accidentally" leaking and then honouring discount codes to get sales in just a few days before Black Friday. Whilst these emails will work, you clearly cannot employ this tactic very often.

"Congratulations! Your order is nearly ready to be shipped."

One of my colleagues was sent this email recently and used it as an example that we could employ. She hadn't ordered anything or put anything in her web basket. Instead, it was a promotional email. Whilst this type of email is borderline click-bait, it could work if you tie it to a decent offer.

The Guardian - Yesterday

Often some of the best headlines come from newspaper and magazines. I heard a while back that 1 in 5 UK tabloid readers buy whatever newspaper has the most interesting headline. I wouldn't be surprised if newspapers employ one person whose job it is to write interesting headlines. These two article headlines are decent examples that I found. First of all, what is a ‘zombie’ fire?! And how did the person who was mauled by a bear survive to tell the story?

These headlines are different to the ones you’d run in an email or ad to promote your business, but the concepts still apply.

Better headlines can have a big impact on the bottom line. So let's give it the attention it deserves.