Writing a headline, some pointers

It may be something I’ve harped on about in the past, but it’s an old hobby horse, so let’s touch on headlines again.


Just about any sales message, whether in print or on-line needs a headline-a good one.

Let’s face it, the headline of your sales message is responsible for up to 80% of the response from that sales message. Hence, the success or failure of most marketing efforts rests very much on the power of your headline.


Using a print ad as an example, 10-20% of your prospective readers will read your ad. That’s it. So, if you have a so-so headline, you can lose pretty much all the prospective readers of your ad.
To capture your prospective reader, you need to grab him/her with a good, punchy headline.


In a previous article, I wrote on the use of a “how-to” statement as a great way of writing a headline. Here, I will give some general pointers on writing headlines.


As covered earlier and again here, a headline is just so important. Even poorly written ads have been successful because of the overwhelming power of a good headline. Your prospects will decide whether to read your sales message in only two or three seconds. That is all the time they will give you to scan your headline. Really, you and I are no different.



We do not READ a newspaper, we SCAN the headlines - article headlines and ad headlines. We are looking for only for what interests us at the moment we read.



A headline comprises the first words at the top of a newspaper ad. It is the title of your article, the subject line of your email or letter, or the top of your web page. Some quick pointers:
Make sure that your headline is the first group of words that your reader sees. I’ve seen fancy layouts with the headline buried in the body of an ad. So, subtle and yet so easy to miss. We’re not out to win awards for ad layouts, but to make sales.


Ads that go against this pointer put their logo on the top, where the headline should be. If you just want to get subliminal messages through, without trying to get your reader to go through the body copy, this might work. Otherwise, it’s a complete waste of time.


The headline should pull in the reader with some sort of promise. Once, you get the reader’s attention, the eyes will be pulled down to your logo, as part of your signature. Of the readers who will see your ad, something like 10-20% will have an interest in your message. If you miss out on these readers, you’ve just done your money.


The headline should not only have kind or promise, it should be catchy and noticeable. Some headlines just describe the product that’s advertise and that’s it. Ho-hum. “1 tonne widget”. So, what’s the promise. Mind you if someone is looking for a 1 tonne widget, this could be enough to pull him/her through the body copy.


Now, why not something like “You can save money with our 1 tonne widget”, better yet, “How you can save money with our 1 tonne widget”.


You appeal to the hip pocket nerve and get the reader’s curiosity going.


We will not interest all readers, only the 10-20% who may be in the market for a 1 tonne widget. And, since the reader’s curiosity is piqued, he/she will read on.



The body copy does the rest.

Your advertising message and why people buy from you

Working and dealing with B2B clients and receiving and reading a host of trade publications means I come across many marketing/selling messages throughout each working day.

Again, I must profess disappointment at the quality of advertising in the trade press. I’m not saying that these ads are all produced sloppily in-house, a majority are professionally-prepared by ad agencies or other professional communication practitioners. And, I put myself as guilty of these same transgressions in marketing communication.

I personally make no excuses as I usually just follow client instructions, especially when clients supply the copy. And, my only input is by way of layout. I refer to the ad message and what is set out in the ad brief. (However, when I am asked to develop a concept, it's another story.)

Many ads feature the client logo on top, with ad copy being either a company mission statement or an enumeration of products and services offered—the classic tombstone ad, or ”name, rank and serial number ad” as this is also known.

At best, these types of ads are of value only as subliminal reminders of an organisation’s presence in the marketplace. Unfortunately, at worse, these are not only ignored, but could be a way of proving to the market that the staff of the company concerned is just too busy to take time to prepare the right message or really is not interested in getting more customers.

Am I being too harsh?

Well, maybe. But consider this: when putting out a marketing communication, the point of view is not “I” or “we”, but should really be “you”. Yes, you the customer or prospective customer.

And, to really make an impact on the reader, the aspect certainly should be what’s in it for the reader.

Again, I refer to a promise to the reader. This is usually of one or more benefits the reader would get from buying or using the advertiser’s product or service.

When Dove sold its soap to the public, the company did not just offer a means of achieving personal hygiene, but one of “younger and smoother skin”. The emphasis was on the moisturiser in the soap.

The slant of the Volvo ads was on safety. The focus was not on the car itself, but on the safety shell, built into each vehicle. Volvo now has another slant, but the “Staying Alive” message is still at the back of my mind because it was memorable. And more importantly, the promise was safety, not just the driver, but the driver’s family who are in the vehicle with him (her).

(Funny though, that the safety cell was not invented by Volvo, though the company would certainly be remembered for relating this with its cars. It was developed by Mercedes Benz, who did not patent the technology as the management of the company wanted to share this with the rest of the world.)

I digress, but you get my drift. The principal consideration is not that you as a marketer are there put a message across because you love your organisation or your job, it’s because you as a marketer exist because of your customers. No customers, no you.

And, your customer doesn’t care about your company, your mission statement, your product (or service) offering, but on what your company can do for him or her. Yes, what’s in it for me (the customer).

So, the point of view and the message is a promise of something that must just be too good to pass up.

And, put simply the more enticing the message the greater the interest the reader will have to go beyond the headline, read through the body copy and then contact you for more details.

First impressions count: what about your logo?

At the Prospect's Awards evening, I sat beside a gentleman who was unhappy with their company logo. I offered to help him in revitalising this, and got me thinking.

If you were to go for a job interview sloppily dressed, with hair unkempt, clothes dissheveled and looking like you not only need a bath but a shave as well, how do you expect to get that job you applied for. Even if you’re the most qualified, if the job is for an executive position, you should go to the interview dressed the part.

First impressions count for a lot. Likewise for your communication pieces.
If your brochure, business card, logo or other communication piece looks like it was done in matter of minutes on your word processor, what does that say about your company?

With the resources available today, there is really no excuse to get the communication piece done professionally. And, this doesn’t have to cost the earth.
Let’s take the logo as a starting point. This visual communication piece is the first representation of your company. While literacy is not a problem like it was two centuries back, when logos (or trademarks) had to really be very recognisable, as many people could not read, the logo should at least be memorable.

By memorable, I mean this must have some impact on the reader. Impact here also means legibility, right use of colour, visual appeal and so on.

Logo is a term taken from logotype, a symbol, used as a trademark or brand for a company or its products and services.Trademarks were, as the name implies, used by traders and merchants to identify themselves. Today, logos (trademarks) are used by all sorts of organisations, including governments, clubs, etc.

Logos and trademarks are not just mere words or symbols they are many things. This is specially a means of identity for an organisation, product or service. It is a means of differentiating these from others especially in the same field and, of course, a communication piece.

Logos communicate information to the reader things like value, origin, quality and so on.

Logos, especially trademarks, add value to organisations, products and services. They are valuable assets that are legal property. As such, many organisations spend a lot of time and money to protect their use.

As a communication piece, it should first be legible. Secondly, it should be memorable and stand out from the crowd. A quick logo, done on a word processor just won’t do.

Going back to the first impressions, what would a logo that looks quickly done and is not legible say to a prospective customer? Would you deal with someone from a company that really didn’t put too much thought into its logo? Does the logo appear like it was a backyard operation?

Wouldn’t you rather deal with a company that looked professional and smart? And, these are things that the logo will communicate to the reader.

So, if you’re considering updating your logo, why not get some professional help to get the job done right. At the very least, consider legibility, memorability, impact and remember this must make a good first impression to whoever reads this.

Writing about features and benefits, there's a difference

Remember the old “features” and “benefits”. I’ve been involved with these two aspects of many a product over more years than I care to remember. (In an earlier life as a sales representative, the product features and benefits were drummed to us by the powers that be in every product training session.)

I note that in a number of ads, I’ve come across in the last few years and up to the present, product features are prominently covered in the body copy of print ads. So much so, that the actual benefits that accrue from those features are many times forgotten. Or, left to the reader to work out.

So, what am I getting at. It’s simply this: to sell product, one has to concentrate on benefits, not features. It’s benefits that sell, not the features.

Features are the different aspects that describe the product. This may be the bells and whistles, which many a salesperson, has more than once been so enamoured of that the benefits of these are lost in the telling. Or, they may be the nuts and bolts of a product.

Let’s stick to print ads, for the purpose of this post. Using a personal computer as an example, today, we see many ads pushing dual core processors, and the amount of RAM found in the units being promoted.

This is akin to saying that this car has so many horsepower (kilowatts of power if we must think metric), or so many cylinders and so on.

This is alright, if we are preparing a specification from which we will be supplying a product. But, as we are trying to sell, we need to highlight benefits. Yes, the old what’s in it for the buyer. What will a buyer or eventual user get from the feature you just highlighted?

Taking the PC example again, more RAM, means that it is a lot easier working a particular computer. In the days of memory measured in kilobytes, rather megabytes (really gigabytes today), this meant the user had to shut down an application before switching to another.

Yes, dear reader, this used to be the case. Our younger readers may not appreciate this, but that was how it was only some 10 years ago.

Anyway, I digress. Multi-tasking is now a given. But, if you were trying to sell a computer with only 512 Mbytes of RAM, what chance have you against your opposition’s offering 2 GB.

But, instead of pointing out the 2 GB, we can highlight the benefit of greater productivity, because of greater RAM. This means in the end, more time to do other things, or more dollars in the bottom line.

That’s right. That is what is in it for the prospective buyer (which is what the reader is).

So, when preparing your next ad, don’t forget to stress benefits, rather than features. If you do have to enumerate features, don’t forget to explain just what this means to the reader. That’t right, what the benefit of the feature is to that person.

Some thoughts on blogging

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It's been busy after the Christmas holidays. And, in typical Jack Garcia fashion, I forgot, or just couldn't get in the mood to focus on updating my blog.

Which brings me to some important characteristics of blogs. Timeliness comes to mind. Frequency is another. Quite importantly is commitment.

Part of the service I offer my clients is help in setting up blogs and their regular updating. The work involved is not merely setting up and publishing, but a strong emphasis on pinging.

After all, what's the point of putting out a blog that's helping promote your company, if you don't take advantage of the search engines' current attraction with blogs. (It's current flavour of the month.)

Search engines love content. That's what they live on. Content.

They look for content, relate these to keywords and help users search and browse the web looking for information.

Search engines' web robots crawl the internet looking for new content.

So, what bloggers should do after a new post is to make sure that search engines know that there's something new. Ping the search engines.

A ping is a quick note to the search engines to let them know that you have new content (a new post) in your blog.

Anyway, I digress.

For bloggers who use this communication means to help promote their business, commitment is important. Before I start blogs for clients, I ask them to commit to keeping the blog alive as a matter of course.

It's like starting a communication piece, eg, a newsletter and stopping after only a few issues.

Blogs are a lot simpler a proposition, also cheaper and arguably with greater reach and more timelines, so this medium should be easier to keep up.

Which brings me back to why I have not updated my blog. Mea culpa. Plain human frailty. Unable to focus. Laziness. Just couldnt' be bothered. You name it.

Enough, rambling. With this blog, I promise to be more timely, more frequent and hopefully very relevant.

Until my next posting.

"How to" write a headline for a print ad

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Previously, I lamented the waste of an ad for not using a headline. Here I would like to give the reader some pointers on how to write headlines. Specifically using the words "How to".

A "How-to" headline is one of the most effective ones there is. Like the word "free", these words have a strong attraction.

In the Web 2.0 world, users of the net go to this resource looking for information. How to do something, build something, improve something, save something or whatever something, that's one of the reasons people seek out information on the net.

Well, just imagine the advertiser sets out some information to teach the reader "how-to" do something smartly, if you as a reader, came across those words on a subject you were interested in, you'd certainly read on. Right?

You bet.

Hence, we have a headline that gets attention. That's the number one objective of a headline.

If you remember the old formula (AIDA) of ad preparation, which stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. Before we develop a reader's interest, we have the catch his/her attention. That's the headline's job.

If we get that, then chances are the reader will go through the rest of the ad copy.

You bet.

Well, I see that you're getting my drift.

And, that's just one type of headline one can use in print advertising. Remember what I said about promise. Again I go back to Samuel Johnson, who said "Promise, large promise is the soul of an advertisement". That is what a headline has to do for your ad. Make a promise.

A how-to headline promises to teach the reader just how to do what is covered in the headline.

And, chances are curiosity will lead the reader through the body copy and if interested enough and persuaded to action by the advertisement, contact the advertiser.

And, the headlines's job is done.

Ads without headlines...what a waste

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It still never ceases to amaze me why advertisers who pay good money for print ad do not have headlines in their ads.

Four out of five readers will see the headline and not the rest of the ad (body copy). It's the one in five who is caught by the headline will read on and proceed to the body copy.

Without a headline, not only have you lost some 80% or your readership, but chances are you have lost 100%. Why? Simple, what was used to capture your reader? Nothing.

Unless the rest of the ad has graphics that will grab the reader by the neck, that person will proceed to the next page.

Expecting a reader to go to your body copy, without a headline to grab him/her, is really expecting a lot. A heck of a lot.

Again, because you have to first catch that person and entice him/her to proceed with to the body copy.
Headlines I've found that work well are "How to's", "Direct offers", "Unique product statements", "Questions" and a few others.

Many years ago, Samuel Johnson said that "promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement". This promise can be carried in the headline and elaborated on in the body copy. Without the headline, that advertisement does not only go without a soul, it becomes a meaningless piece of communication and certainly does not fulfil any aim that was set for the ad, ie, to elicit an enquiry.

Before considering re-running an ad without the headline, consider carefully if the ad does what you intended it to do. If, because it has your logo up top, you like the look of the ad, why not add a headline that will grab the reader and make that person want to read on to the rest of the ad.

It's not that hard, but will earn you the satisfaction of producing a communication piece that works. And, one that will do the job that it's supposed to do...get you enquiries and consequently more customers.

The above link is a sampling of some ads that we've prepared—all of which have headlines.