When someone lands on your piece of copy – or sees the headline to your article on the social media feed – the first thing that they’ll do is read your headline. Unless this grabs them straightaway, they’ll move onto the next article. In fact, statistics show that five times more people read the headline as opposed to those who read the body copy of your copy.
The average Internet user will only read 80% of headlines. However, only 20% of these people will read the article.
Scary, huh?
This means that you need to spend far more time on making sure that your headline captures the readers that you want to be reading your articles. Luckily, there are certain formulas that digital copywriters can use in order to make sure that they come out with a winning headline.
How to create winning headlines with enticing content
The 4Us
Copywriting greats – Michael Masterson and Bill Bonner – came up with a way to test the effectiveness of your headlines. They say that all headlines should tick the boxes of the 4U’s. These are:
- Urgency
- Uniqueness
- Ultra-Specificity
- Usefulness
Urgency
For a headline to qualify as urgent, it needs to prompt a reader into taking action immediately – whatever this action is, such as making a purchase or signing up to a newsletter. Copywriting techniques that can be used include adding text – to your headline – that includes:
- One Day Only
- Expiring Soon
- Limited Time Offer