This time it’s all about headlines, which are an important adjunct to the copywriting articles I wrote at the end of last year.
My experience dealing with a variety of clients in the building industry is that headlines are somewhat misunderstood. But with the proliferation of DIY digital marketers out there, they are more important than ever.
So what’s the point of the headline and why is it so important?
A headline has only one function: to get your reader to read the next line of your email / advert / press release / Facebook post / website news (delete as appropriate). And the reason it’s so important is because if it doesn’t do its job, the rest of your copy – no matter how important or exciting it is– will not be read.
Most people know that headlines are important for newspaper and magazine articles and press releases. But they are also vital for email marketing, social media and even your website news page.
If you send out a press release with a boring or self-indulgent headline (eg ‘My Super Stone Company Launches New Marble Range’) you’ll probably have limited success. A good headline will appeal to the interests of your target readers.
If you’re sending out a newsletter or a promotional email, the two primary factors that will determine whether or not it is opened are who you are and the subject line (the subject line is also the headline). And often the subject line / headline is the more important of the two.
A good measure to judge the effectiveness of your subject line is to analyse how many people open your emails – known as the open rate.
The subject line isn’t the only factor affecting your open rate but it’s one of the most important. The UK property industry average open rate for 2015 was 26%. For construction 19%. How do your campaigns compare? And, more importantly, how can you improve them?
If you do a quick Google search you’ll see that there are dozens of ‘How to Write Compelling Headlines’ pages. Some of them are quite good. I don’t need to re-hash here. Instead I will give you what I consider to be the three most important headline themes for our particular industry:
- Fear
- Curiosity
- Prosperity
If you’re focussed on the construction industry, and you can instil one of these three emotions in your communication through your headline, whether they’re major developers, house builders or ‘on the tools’ tradesmen, you will almost certainly improve the results.
1. Why Fear?
The construction industry is more litigious than many others and almost everyone who works in it knows that! It’s the reason architects specify well-known brands rather than trying new products and developers stick to the same few contractors. Contracts are thicker than Yellow Pages and Terms & Conditions can be several pages long. Risk is a big concern for contractors, consultants and suppliers alike, and anything that reduces it will have a willing audience.
2. Why Curiosity?
Curiosity has the power to stimulate action. While this is probably no more effective in the construction industry than any other, I know from personal experience that it can get your email opened and your press release read. Think about ways to use your headlines to pique your readers’ curiosity.
3. Why Prosperity?
A ‘£’ sign is like the word ‘sex’. It gets noticed. So why is prosperity at the bottom of the list? Surely it’s the most likely to interest people. Yes… and no.
People are motivated to action because they want to move towards something (I gave up smoking because I want to run a marathon). Or they’re forced into action to move away from something (I gave up smoking because the doctor said it would kill me if I continued).
There’s an element of both in all of us and the numbers of ‘move towards’ people versus ‘move away from’ people in society might well be quite even. Not so when it comes to decision-making in the construction industry – see 1. above.
Using my own experience of having tested several options, I know that a headline explaining why your competitors are overtaking you will attract more readers than one that talks about increasing sales.
Does the headline for this article make sense now? If you don’t normally read this column but you read this article because of it, let me know on alan@Keystonecm.co.uk.