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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