Writing Headlines That Get Results


Every copywriter and every journalist knows the importance of a powerful
headline, and that awareness has spilled into the business blogosphere, where
everyone is a bit of a copywriter and a bit of a journalist.

Despite that, many still underestimate just how important headlines are. So
here are some anecdotes, facts, and guidelines that can help you write even
better headlines (and also let you know how much you should focus on them).

The 50/50 Rule of Headlines

According to some of the best copywriters of all time, you should spend
half of the entire time it takes to write a piece of persuasive content on the
headline. So if you have a blog post that is really important to you or your
business, one that you really want people to read, you should downright
obsess over your post title.
Advertising legend David Ogilvy knew the power of headlines, and how the
headline literally determined whether the advertisement would get read. He
rewrote this famous headline for an automobile advertisement 104 times:

At 60 miles an hour, the only thing you hear in the new Rolls Royce is the ticking of
the dashboard clock …
Master copywriter Gene Schwartz often spent an entire week on the first 50
words of a sales piece — the headline and the opening paragraph. Those
50 words are the most important part of any persuasive writing, and writing
them well takes time.
Even for the masters.

The 80/20 Rule of Headlines

Here are some interesting statistics.
On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10
will read the rest. This is the secret to the power of the headline, and why it so
highly determines the effectiveness of the entire piece.
The better the headline, the better your odds of beating the averages and
getting what you’ve written read by a larger percentage of people.
Writing a great headline doesn’t guarantee the success of your writing. The
benefit conveyed in the headline still needs to be properly satisfied in the
body copy, either with your content or your offer.

But great body content with a bad or even marginal headline is doomed to
go unread.