What Do You Need to Know About Headlines

Have you ever wondered why some marketing tactics just don’t seem to work for your business?

You sit and watch a competitor’s website grow and business soar and you just don’t know or not sure how they did it.

After all, aren’t all marketing tactics pretty much the same?

The answer is “NO”!

Marketing tactics that work are not about rocket science, often time, they are just very simple concepts but many online marketers fail to recognize them for the value they can bring to a business.

Focusing on a business that brings high conversion rates and plenty of sales is every marketer’s dream, but it will only materialize when marketing tactics are successfully deployed.

Headlines Say it All

Don’t wait to tell your audiences, prospects and potential customers what’s in it for them, tell them right away with your headline.

Headlines are one of the most effective marketing tactics to use. It is the first point of visitor engagement. It is the very first thing your website visitor will see when they visit your site. The headline is your website identity. It is like the first thing you see when you meet somebody – their face; your headline is your website’s face.

A well-written with valuable information headline can grab the attention and attract the audiences to stay longer on your site. The reason I said this is because it gives visitor a chance to quickly understand what is in it for them, why they need to read further than the headline. Instead of clicking away from your site, they can click through the information that you provided to find out more in detail.

A headline’s job is to get visitor to read a page’s content, this process needs to be repeated on each page of your site, so don’t use teasers that make them feel they have to keep searching for what is important, be up-front and be direct about the things you want to say, either it is a product offer or how to tips.

Marketing Your Stuff through Headline

The headline is the best place to start to market the benefits of the product. It is also the best way to attract search engines, which means when someone uses Google for search something, they enter their search term. Google then tries to present those web pages that contain information directly relating to that search term. The first thing it looks at is the page title tag, (part of the meta tags).

The next thing it looks at is the actual page’s headline; this should reflect the content on the page as well. If both of these have used the actual search term, then Google has a fairly good indication that this page has information about the searcher’s search term and it will display the page to the searcher.

When the headline includes the words that potential customers are most likely to search for, the search engines will reward you by bringing more visitors to your website.

Facts, statistics, and data that substantiate your claims of value are also important ways to increase the effectiveness of headlines. For example, “48% reduction in costs with X product …” can be a real attention grabber. Thus, don’t hesitate to use data to support the benefit you claim.

Types of Headline

Basically, there are 7 main types of headline, when you write the headline, bear in mind of that you need to write it for search engines as well. Each example below is focus on the search term either “Blogging” or “Blog”.

• Direct – Example, “A Beginner’s Guide to Blogging. This should be a bold and direct statement.
• Commanding – The first word should be a strong verb like “Join, Subscribe, Come along” etc. Example – Rock that Blogging World
• How to – This type of headline can be very engaging. Again it is something the intended audiences want to know about. For example – How to Become an Internet Sensation by Blogging?
• The Question – To intrigue the reader. For example “Is Blogging Better or Facebook Better?
• Announcement – The trick here is that it has to be newsworthy, at least to your intended audience. Keeping to the theme – “A New Easy to Use Blog Content Management System just launched!”
• The Explanation – For example, 4 Ways to Make Money Online from Blogging. The rest of the content provides what are the four tips in detail.
• Testimonial – For example “StudioPress Themes for WordPress helps us blogging better.

Finally, when composing a headline, try and imagine the reaction of your primary target audience. If you can picture them thinking – “So what?” then your headline is bound to fail. If you can imagine them nodding their head in agreement or even scratching their head wondering, then you are probably on the right track.