Why Your Article Must Have A Great Headline – The Statistics May Surprise You

The world’s greatest copy writers claim that in any written piece, be it a sales letter, an advertisement or an auction listing, the headline produces 90% of the impact.
They also say that less than one-fifth of all the people who read a headline will go on to read the body copy. Less than one-fifth! Looking at it the other way round, that means that four out of every five people who read a headline won’t bother to read the advertisement or sales letter.
So make sure that yours is one of those one in five where the reader is motivated to read on. It can’t be just any old headline, however: there’s a lot of skill and hard work required.
You may write hundreds – even thousands – of words to sell your product or service, but it could be that only one in five people who read your headline will even start to read your text. And what about all those people who read a couple of words then give up, believing there’s nothing there for them?
Doesn’t that show just how important it is to write a winning headline? It isn’t enough to write a stunning advertisement. If your headline doesn’t work then no one will ever get to see your wonderful text.
There’s a well-known formula for writing advertisements: its acronym is AIDA, standing for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
Your header should have one major aim – to attract the reader’s ATTENTION. If it fails in that endeavour, the rest of your efforts have been wasted… no one will ever read your beautifully crafted advertisement or sales letter.
One of the all-time great advertising copy writers, David Ogilvy, suggests that ‘unless your headline sells your product, you’ve wasted 90% of your money.’ Harsh but almost certainly true.
As well as the major aim of attracting attention, your headline must also have a couple of secondary aims. It isn’t enough to simply attract attention: the reader must also be sufficiently intrigued, excited, motivated (or whatever) to read your body copy – the ad itself.
Conventional wisdom says that your headline should include the product or service’s number one benefit; that to get people to read on you have to give them a reason. That’s a fine ambition, but you don’t always have the space or time to spell out the main benefit fully. It may not be possible to explain it satisfactorily in fewer than twenty words.
But you must still give the folks a reason to read your copy. In the case of this post, the title says that ‘the statistics may surprise you’. Finding out what those statistics are and whether they do indeed surprise you should be sufficient motivation to open the post and start reading it.
Your other secondary aim must be to make it clear who should read the advertisement itself. The title of this post starts out ‘why you must have a great headline’. Clearly then, this piece will only appeal to people who are writing articles, letters or ads which require a headline.
In this post I’ve tried to underline the vital importance of a strong headline. In future posts I’ll expand on this theme and start to explain some ways you can dramatically improve the pulling power of your own headlines.