Precisely 18? Yes, precisely.
Your headline is one of the first elements to catch your reader’s attention. You can’t just wing it; there are certain guides for writing high-performance headlines and I’m about to share it with you.
One of our most common methods for writing different headlines at CrowdTamers is to fall back on the 3 classical arguments that Aristotle developed 2,500 years ago. But it’s one thing to say, “Write a logical appeal”. If I’m telling you to talk about your business or your product logically, what does that mean?
Here’s the actual rubric I use to teach team members and founders I’m coaching how to approach writing high-performamce headlines in 18 different ways. It’s simple and fast, and you can re-write your product’s key values in 10 minutes with this trick.
Logical Arguments
There are 3 simple logical arguments you can make.
- Save money
- Save time
- Improve [key industry metric].
The first two of these are framed as “don’t lose something” because as humans we run advanced thinking processes on top of what is fundamentally a bunch of monkey neurons and we’re all programmed to hate loss more than we love success.
When you write “Save money” you can phrase it two ways:
- Earn 30% more with your next ad campaign with WonderVision. or
- Quit spending thousands of dollars on fraudulent ad clicks
Both express saving money, but one makes a much more visceral appeal. It can help to think when you’re writing high-performance headlines whether you’re making a positive appeal or a negative one. Testing both can teach you a lot about the value you actually represent to your clients.
Emotional Arguments
Likewise here, we want to think in terms of positive and negative emotions.
- Feel good when you use this product
- Common frustration of the problem you solve
- Be part of a community that uses this product
Positive emotions—confidence, joy, contentment, and relief—are all good associations to have with your brand.
But there are times when you want to clearly recall to a lead that their current situation sucks. Talk about their current frustrations and pains to remind them how they would be happier if that problem didn’t exist.
Finally, one of the most powerful emotions we are wired to care about is a feeling of belonging. If you can convince people that they are part of a tribe when they use your product, you can do more than just build a user. You can build a fan base who will sell your product for you.
Social Proof
Many newly-launched businesses don’t have a lot of social proof behind what they’re doing yet. But there are 3 ways to get social proof even just as you’re launching.
- Tell a story your audience knows
- Get quotes about your problem from famous people
- Get a buddy to say something about you on social media & quote it
People most like to buy from other people. And headlines like this makes your brand come off as more authentic than the sales-y headlines. High-performance headlines tend to be the more authentic sounding lines; no one likes overtly sales-y headlines.
If you can tell your audience a story that they already know—Mary spent 10 hours a week generating reports before she switched to Reportly—they will feel that story in their bones.
Variously, you can get social proof by finding a quote from someone famous in your audience’s field where they talk about the problem you solve and why it needs addressing.
Finally, if you don’t have clients yet, ask 3 good friends of yours to tweet or make a Facebook post that’s public that you can embed or quote to use in your marketing.
Also, consider: positive or negative emotions. Is it better to say “Wondervision saved me 10 hours a week!” or “I stopped hating generating reports every Friday” as your customer quote? If you have a friend who you’re making post the quotes for you, you can write it either way and see which gets you more engagement. 😉
Creating high-performance headlines – In use
We’re obsessed with message testing at CrowdTamers. With just the concepts that we’ve outlined above and a simple grid to keep track of what we’re saying about what, we can generate endless iterations on a message.
| Positive | Negative | |
|---|---|---|
| Logical | ||
| Save Time | Audit all of your ad clicks in just 10 minutes. | Auditing your ad clicks wastes 40 minutes a week. |
| Save Money | Earn 30% more with your next ad campaign with WonderVision. or | Quit spending thousands of dollars on fraudulent ad clicks |
| Save XXX | Reduce your fraudulent ad click rate by 22%. | Up to 80% of your ad clicks are fraudulent. |
| Emotional | ||
| Feel Good | Control your ad budget with confidence. | Quit worrying over how to spot click fraud. |
| Common Anger | Sleep easy. We’ll catch the bad guys for you. | “80% of your last ad traffic came from click farms? |
| Join a team | Discover why savvy marketers love WonderVision. | “Drats, foiled again” —click fraudsters, probably. |
| Social proof | ||
| Tell a story | Jake’s boss is thrilled with ROAS once he caught all the click fraud. | Jake quit wasting thousands on fraudulent ad clicks. |
| Famous Quote | “Ad fraud is bad.” Martin Shkreli | “There’s a sucker born every minute” —Mark Zuckerberg |
| Social Quote | “Wow, this is great!” Your old roommate | “I used to spend $10k a month on fraudulent ad clicks. Now I don’t!” Your gramma. |
When you’re able to find new and better ways to talk about your main features, you’re ready to dive into the deep end of GTM testing.
That, in turn, sets you on the path to long-term business success.
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