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 the 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. The headline will attract the right customers.
The title should be instant product seller. According to research, five times more readers read just the headline when compared to those who read the complete advertisement. The headline has the power to sell the product.
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. 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 should be incorporated in the title.
Write the product advantages in bold. If a visual is placed in the advertisement, it will be a good complement. As a picture speaks a 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.