There is no denying the fact that the success of an
advertisement lies mostly in the headline. The headline should attract the
reader and make him read the rest of the advertisement. The headline should be
simply catchy and various key points should be embedded when deciding on the
headline for the ad.
The headline should catch attention of the eye at the
first glance. Words in headlines should act as tags for the advertisement. It
should say it all about the content that follows. If a company is selling reasonably
priced furniture, the headline of their advertisement should be ‘Durable
furniture for less price’. This headline will attract the right customers who
are on a look out for durable furniture as well as low cost furniture. If the
customers to be reached belong to a category that are interested in decorating
their house with beautiful furniture and aren’t concerned about the price to
get the right look, then the headline can be ‘Change how your house looks by
our oriental furniture’. Anything other
than the prospects should not be included in the headline. If both men and
women can use a product, both of them should be referred to in the title,
missing out even one of the category is like losing a huge number of potential
customers.
The title should be instant product seller. According
to a research, five times more readers read just the headline when compared to
those who read the complete advertisement. So the investment is of no use, if
the title isn’t good enough to sell the product. There can be a possibility
that the content of the ad isn’t strong enough. All the harm can be undone by
having a powerful headline.
The headline should be centered on the product and not
the company that is selling the product. The customer’s interest should be reflected
and he should feel that he is directly addressed. Start with ‘you’ and not
‘we’. So if the client specified on mentioning the company’s name, don’t start
the sentence with it. For example, instead of writing ‘Tylenol – solution for
sever cold ’, write ‘Got sever cold? Try Tylenol’. Never forget to mention the
name of the product in the headline. The product name should be of top
priority.
A snapshot of the benefits of the product should be
given in the headline. This is an important quality of a well-phrased headline.
The customers look out for advantages when he thinks of buying a product.
Keywords like whiter teeth, nutritious cereals, or miraculous growth should be
incorporated in the title.
If inculcating
all these factors have made the headline long, it should be remembered to write
the product advantages in bold. If a visual is placed in the advertisement, it
will be a good complement. As a picture speak thousand words. But care should
be taken that the headline should say some part of the story and the visual
should say the rest. Don’t repeat the headline or the picture.
Too much of cleverness should not be applied to design
a headline. There are nearly five hundred advertisements in a local newspaper
on weekends. A regular reader reads the headings of all of them. He will be
able to classify between a false heading and a genuine heading. No false
promises or information should be included in the headline. Over smart
headlines are good for award competitions, but don’t really work with the savvy
customers.
The headline should give out a positive feeling to the
reader. Negativity should be totally excluded as it not only creates a negative
impression but the mind will also be not receptive friendly. It sometimes
confuses the mind and it interprets a negative meaning of the message being
delivered. Confidence should be reflected in the headline. Don’t include any
doubtful words like if and but. Conditional phrases are a strict no. The
sentence should be in present tense, instead of past or future.
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