The NextStage CRO walks you through how to write a headline that catches and keeps your consumers' attention.
An online magazine contacted me with what I'm sure is familiar problem; their numbers were falling. A few questions later I learned the following:
- Subscribers get a headline summary in their email
- Subscribers weren't clicking on the headlines
- Because fewer and fewer subscribers were opening the online, fewer and fewer advertising dollars could be sold
I offered that the disconnect was between steps 2 and 3. The online magazine knew when the emails were opened, hence knew that that's where readers stopped.
This is an easily solvable problem that deals with how the mind accepts and responds to information. Yes, I know that's a NextStage-y thing. Explaining how clients can make their audiences respond more favorably to marketing and other material is what we do, and it is the basis for this column.
Familiarity breeds freedom
I've written before about making sure you've alerted regular site visitors when a site redesign is about to occur.
This was demonstrated on the Emetrics Summit site. Jim Sterne and his crew let visitors know ahead of time when a redesign would be online. Three major results came from this:
- The day the redesign went live the site experienced huge spikes in traffic, level of interest and navigation
- People emailed that they'd been on the Emetrics Summit site and noted the update announcement.
- Other emails demonstrated that people had returned specifically to discover what had changed since their last visit.
The wording in that last line is intentional. People didn't return to "see", they returned to "discover". They were on the site thinking, evaluating, analyzing, interpreting. In other words, they were engaged (something I'll be writing about in a future column).
One take-away from this is that familiarity is a good and useful tool. Changing a little at a time allows visitors to continue doing their thing rather than wasting time figuring out how to do your thing.
Another take-away is that providing visitors with a familiar interface allows you to highlight what has changed. Come home some day to find all your old furniture gone and your walls painted rainbow and you'll probably go back outside to make sure you entered the correct house. Come home some day and be greeted at the door by your significant other saying, "Hi, Sweetie! When you're ready, I want you to take a look at a new chair I bought for the family room and tell me what you think" and you're most likely to accept the new furniture without a thought.
Headlines can push or pull
After you've made sure your subscribers are navigating a familiar interface, make sure your headlines -- your invitations to explore deeper content -- pull readers in rather than push them away. Let me give you some examples.
A recent iMedia cover story on behavioral targeting has this headline: "Why Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up."
This is a good, challenging title. It's going to attract some readers, but not others, because not everyone wants a challenge.
The word "Why" is, in western culture, a defensible word. This means people being asked "Why...?" feel they need to defend themselves. All you need do is look at someone and say "why" with no inflection and their blood pressure goes up, their pulse quickens, their breathing shallows out and their irises go wide.
The physiologic responses are fascinating and are flight or fight based, not good when you want someone to accept information you're providing them or inviting them to explore your content further.
So, while "Why Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up" is good, "Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up Because..." is better because the "Because" is a promise that the answer is coming. The reader doesn't really need to respond. There's no reason to defend, thus energy spent unintentionally raising blood pressure, et cetera, can be spent intentionally exploring the content.
You can even up the ante by adding "(Five Experts Speak)" or something similar. "Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up (Five Experts Speak)". Understand your audience and you'll know whether "Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up Because..." or "Your Creative Needs to Catch-Up (Five Experts Speak)" will drive your numbers heavenward.
Another recent iMedia cover story is "What's Hot in Automotive Sites Today." Again, a good headline if your target audience is in automotive.
A simple way to expand the audience is "What's Hot in Automotive Sites Today And How to Use It." The "And How to Use It" part lets the reader know that the content behind the headline is going to inform regardless of vertical.
The take-aways from these are simple enough: headlines can pull readers into deeper content or push them away from exploring that content. Understand your audience's cognitive, behavioral/effective and motivational drivers and you'll know how to pull them into deeper content.