What is a headline?

Every single page that exists on the internet has some form of a headline. 

In short, a headline is the first words you see at the top of a page. 

A headline has one single purpose…

To grab a website visitor’s attention enough to get them to read the next line on the page… 

That’s it!

By that simple definition, things like a title on a blog post are still considered headlines. 

When most people talk about headlines, they’re thinking of headlines on landing pages and sales pages.

Why does a headline matter?

When talking about a landing page or a sales page, a headline can be the most important part of your page.

The headline sells people on reading the rest of the page.

If you have a bad headline, most of your website visitors will just bounce from your page in the first 3-5 seconds.

To quote great marketer David Ogilvy: “Five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

Headlines can make or break your entire page.

A good headline can explode your conversion rates by 200% or even 300%!

If headlines are so important, how do you write a great one?

3 Keys to writing a great headline

Be Specific

People don’t have the patience to guess if your headline will lead them to something that will help them.

If they have to guess at all what your headline will do for them, most of them will just move on.

Having a specific headline will call out to your dream customer and let them know EXACTLY how you’re going to help them benefit.

On top of that, a specific headline will do something that most marketers don’t think of as a benefit…

… it will repel people.

Specifically, it will repel anyone who is not your dream customer.

Why is that a benefit?

The biggest reason is Cost Per Click (CPC) ads.

Most online ads are CPC ads, which means you are only charged when someone clicks on your ad.

Which can be GREAT if you can write ads that ONLY your dream customers are interested in…

Since they’re the people who are the most likely to convert into a customer.

Use numbers 

Numbers will stand out better in the sea of ads competing for people’s attention.

They can easily break up the wall of words hurled across the internet in people’s faces.

You can supercharge this effect by combining it with being specific, by using unique numbers like 13 or 7. 

Using numbers has worked so well that marketers have already beaten people over the head numbers like 5, 10, 25…

And pretty much every other number you can think of that ends in 5 or 0.

Switching it up to something simple like a 7 is an easy way to make your headline stand out even more.

Be concise

Depending on where you plan to place your headline this key can become mandatory. 

If your headline is going to be in an ad on social media or appear in a google search… 

Then there will be a limit on how much of your headline people will see without having to expand it.

Headlines that run past that cut off tend to lose most, if not all, of their attention grabbing power!

It’s an increasingly obvious fact, people’s attention spans are shrinking.

Your headline needs to be able to grab your prospects’ attention…

Stop them from whatever they’re doing…

And pull them by the shirt to where you need them to be… 

All in a split second.

You don’t have the luxury of writing a full paragraph in your headline.