The guest blog today comes from Jane Penson of Grammar to Go, a business born out of Jane's love of writing and focused on improving your writing skills.
"Is this a good headline?
'Reliable gardener – South West Cornwall'
Yes, if you are in SW Cornwall looking for people with out of control gardens, but not if you are an estate agent in Twickenham. So we have established right away that you cannot judge the effectiveness of a headline until you have answered this vital question.
Whose attention am I trying to attract?
Who is your target market? What are they looking for? What kind of language are they likely to respond well to?
Let's suppose that you are selling a big, impractical rambling house with character but needing a lot of money spending on it. Can you visualise the kind of person who will like it? Will they be immaculately dressed and driving the latest BMW or a bit scruffy with paint on their jeans? You don't know of course, but I strongly recommend that you have a guess. Think of a specific person that you know or can imagine who would love that house so much that they would be willing to spend more than they could really afford on it. Now think what language to use. What words would they respond to: charming; elegant; period; delightful; needs love and attention... you get the idea.
I accept that if you go out on a limb you may turn some people off. On the other hand, if you always stick to the same old ‘extensive, well maintained blah blah' you will never turn anyone on. Headlines have to miss a lot of people if they are going to target the right ones precisely. To put that another way, a headline's job is to focus; to grab the attention of the most likely people to respond to the message below it. Clearly, you can't focus on everyone.
Rules for good headlines
- Choose words that make the most important point. If a house is priced very low because the sellers are desperate to get rid of it – that may be your key message.
- Be as concise as possible or the reader won't get to the end. Research has shown that people often don't read headlines on the web unless the first two words grab them. So 'Crawley Estate Agent opens new shop' is far better than 'Estate agent has recently opened a new shop on the high street in Crawley'
- Start with the most important words. In this example nobody cares unless they live in or near Crawley – so start there. Notice also that the verb ‘opens' in the present tense is better than ‘has opened' in the past tense. It sounds more immediate and exciting.
- Don't try to be clever. It is much better to be clear and concise so that people know what you are talking about than to use a play on words that twists the message. After all, nobody is going to type your word-play into Google are they?
... and an idea
- Try using the same ad on several occasions with completely different headlines and find out which one gets the best response.
Keywords for search engines
When it comes to headlines, follow the same rules for search engines as for people. For body copy, there are more complicated rules which involve needing to understand how search engines operate and what terms people are actually typing in. Headlines use very few words and they are the ones that differentiate this message from everything else out there. Concentrate on readers when writing headlines and worry about search engine optimisation when writing the body copy."
Jane Penson
@JanePenson
http://www.grammartogo.co.uk/
01494 873093
I've mentioned before that headlines are important for blog SEO so I can't quite agree with Jane's last statement, but I do agree that you should always write for the reader. Particularly when writing headlines for Google AdWords.
If you like learning about headlines, you might also like to take a look at the guide I mentioned back in this blog post on building a personal brand.
How many of you are doing more than just writing "4 Bed Detached House" as the headline for your portal listings or brochures I wonder?
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