Five Tips for Writing Winning Content Headlines

Content is king, so says the marketing cliché’. Everyone who works in or with markets knows the importance of targeted and effective content: blogs, posts, videos, articles, white papers, webinars and more.

Of course, the first step is to understand your target market and craft information that appeals to their needs and interests.

The headline is where the rubber meets the road to capture their attention, hooking them into reading your content. But if you’ve written them, you know that the few words in a headline are often the most difficult part of writing content.

Here are five tips to help you write winning headlines and effective marketing content.

Tip 1:        Market Insight = Effective Headlines

Writing a great headline takes more than just a clever idea. It should identify your markets biggest problem and suggest a solution you can uniquely provide.

Think of how your product or service solves the problem and then distill it down to one sentence.

Do this and you’ll have the ingredients for a great headline that gets action.

Tip 2:        Promise a Solution and Tell Them How You’ll Deliver

As mentioned, the best headlines promise a solution to your customers’ problems.

But to be more than just a promise, your headline needs to provide details about the way your product or service will solve their problem.

Tip 3:        Understand the Media

Each medium has its own distinctive characteristics which, when mastered, will maximize your message.

For outdoor, you have 4 to 7 words maximum and an attention span of about five second to deliver the message.

Print can take a longer message, if well crafted. But less is always more in advertising.

For Digital mediums, the shorter the better. A good rule of thumb is to try to limit the length to three frames maximum, with the last frame carrying the call to action.

Social Media should be short and to the point, always making the primary benefit perfectly clear.

Tip 4:        Use Numbers to Describe a Concept

Whenever you can use numbers to identify and quantify a concept, like “Five Mistakes to Avoid on a Date,” you make a promise as to how much information they’ll receive in exchange for their time. 

It also indicates how much time your customer will need to dedicate to get the information.

Tip 5:        Develop a Headline Writing Process

Creativity is a great thing! But your first idea is seldom as good as it seems when you thought of it at 3 am.

While you’ll eventually discover your own, best process, here’s a simple procedure you can follow…

Step 1:     Write down your insight and the first/best idea in its newborn form.

Step 2:     Continue to write down all your ideas, the good, the bad and the ugly. Then let them rest for a while.

Step 3:     Look for a common thread among all your headline options. What’s the best idea to solve the problem?

Step 4:     Choose the best idea expressed in your headline. Then make it as short as possible. Voila’—there’s your headline!

When you combine insight with inspiration, the result is a winning headline!

C. Rick Jourdan

President, Jourdan Marketing Consultants

Read my Middle Brain Marketing blog about marketing topics relevant to a variety if industries.