The Power Behind Magnetic Headlines
"We pick out what we wish to read by headlines"
- Claude Hopkins, Scientific Advertising
Imagine an office setting. The moment someone enters a typical office, they are faced with a receptionist. Within seconds, they begin to judge the company based on the behavior and attitude of the receptionist. If the receptionist is polite and friendly, they will have a good impression of the company. If the attitude of the receptionist is rude, angry and grouchy, the image of the company would be tarnished immediately.
Headlines are just like the receptionists of your office. A good headline will make your salescopy. A bad one will break it.
Every single day of our life, we are bombarded by countless emails, letters and mobile phone messages. If we were to pay attention to every single one of them, we could lose our mind within a year!
So our brain divinely and cleverly devised a method to maintain our sanity. How? By filtering the messages that are important versus those that require lesser attention.
It is often said that for an average person, the first four seconds is enough to determine the fate of the salescopy - either it lands into the nearby garbage bin or it lands into the briefcase of the potential customer. I term this the 'Four Seconds Rule'.
"On the average, five times as many people read the headline compared to the body copy"
- David Oligvy, Ogilvy on Advertising
So how exactly do we filter those messages which are important? By the first few words of the salescopy - the headline.
The secret to writing magnetic headlines comes from practice, lots of testing and learning from professional copywriters' experiences.
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