Headlines that hold attention

The headline decides whether the rest exists. It is worth more attention than any other element and usually gets the least.

The twenty-headline rule

Write twenty before choosing. The first five are the obvious ones everybody writes. Six to twelve are variations. Thirteen to twenty are where something unexpected appears.

It takes forty minutes and it is the highest-return forty minutes in the project.

Seven patterns that work

1. The specific promise. "Bathroom refitted in nine working days."
2. The named problem. "Your quote has been unanswered for three weeks."
3. The surprising number. "Two thirds of local firms are invisible in map results."
4. The direct instruction. "Check your gas contract before September."
5. The contradiction. "Print advertising is not dead. It is just more expensive."
6. The named audience. "For landlords with pre-1990 properties."
7. The withheld answer. "Three reasons a roof fails early." Use sparingly; it wears out.

What consistently fails

The last one deserves care. "Want to save money?" invites a shrug. "Paying more than £2,400 a year to heat a semi?" invites recognition.

Length and format

In digital advertising the constraint is display, not attention. A search headline is cut at roughly 30 characters, a social one at around 40 on a phone. Put the load-bearing words at the front.

In print, longer headlines are fine and often better, because the reader has already committed to the page.

Testing without a big budget

Run two headlines against each other in a search campaign for two weeks. It is the cheapest headline research available, and the results transfer to print, letters and the website.

Test one variable at a time. Two headlines differing in three ways teach nothing.

The subhead does the second job

Where format allows, a subhead below the headline adds the qualification the headline was too short to carry: the price, the area covered, the condition. That combination lets the headline stay sharp without becoming inaccurate.