This article will help you understand and use principles of psychology to quickly improve your headline optimization. If you are a small business, solopreneur or a business with limited marketing resources this article is designed to give you seven straightforward actionable tactics you can implement today to improve your headline copywriting.
We are only focused on headlines in this article. If you are interested in full landing page design check out our article on Landing Page Design Framework.
Headlines are arguably one of the most important aspects of your website or ad copy. You have about 0.5 seconds to capture someone’s attention and it turns out most of us do judge websites by their cover. Legendary copywriter Joe Sugarman is credited with saying “the purpose of the headline is to get you to read the first line. The purpose of the first line is to get you to read the second line. And so on.” The purpose of having people read any of your copy is to build trust and send them further into your sales funnel.
Luckily there is some science behind writing a good headline.
Each of the seven tactics below uses principles developed in academic psychology to maximize the persuasiveness of your copy. Each tactic is described in detail with specific examples and suggestions for further reading.
People are biologically wired to conserve calories. If your copy is hard to understand or takes extra effort to understand people not only tend to form negative opinions about what you are saying, but they often won’t even read it. The first three tactics will help boost clarity in any headline copy.
Positive frames are tangible and easy to understand. Negative frames describe what is not happening and require more metal resources to process. Having to use more mental resources results is increased incomprehension and a degradation of your message.
Metaphors cement abstract ideas in your reader’s mind. They also stand a better chance of connecting with your reader emotionally.
Metaphors tap into emotions and bypass rational thought processes.
Add specific values to statements to make them concrete. Transforming a generic claim into a specific value shows how your product or service solves problems rather than just telling people it solves problems.
Indirect claims leave room for the reader to interpret meaning. When readers generate their own inferences the brain places more trust in the source.
See Edward McQuarrie and Barbara Phillips, “Indirect Persuasion in Advertising: How Consumers Process Metaphors Presented in Pictures and Words,” Journal of Advertising 2005, 34(2): 7-20.
You product or service should always alleviate some sort of pain. If you want to highlight your solution it is helpful to remind readers of their pain. Agitate the underlying problem, why is it important they solve this particular problem?
People are biologically structured to avoid pain and by focusing on their pain they are more likely to be receptive to your solution when reminded of its impact. Tactics five to seven focus on agitating the problem.
Impacts on others can be a more powerful motivator than self interest especially when the impact is negative.
Wash your hands often to protect our customers.
Wash your hands often to protect our customers.
Subtle changes to a sentence structure where the emphasis is on nouns and not verbs can create the impression these attributes are more strong and stable. People described with noun labels (David is a gardener) are considered stronger and more resilient identities than descriptive action verbs (David gardens a lot).
See Gregory Walton and Mahzarin Banaji, “Being What You Say: The Effect of Essentialist Linguistic Labels on Preferences,” 2004, 22(2): 193-213
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