How to Write a Killer Headline for Your Advertisement

A headline is the core of your advertisement; it is what first captures the attention of the reader when he or she first picks up that page to the papers or a magazine. The headline tells the reader in a glance what you have in store for him or her, setting into motion the cognitive gears within his or her mind that would lead to him or her deciding that what your advertisement proposes is worth further consideration. Such is a successful headline, which captivates, and sticks in the reader's mind.

As an advertiser, how should you use your headlines? Studies have shown that only one in six readers would read entire advertisements. Use your headline to catch the attention of your target group. Use it to direct the attention of the reader to an area of interest. Your headlines can be provocative, informative, humorous, or visually interesting.

A headline should follow a few guidelines in order to be effective. These guides will help you structure and write a headline that is not only comprehensive, but sticky as well.

Mention the product
Be sure to tell the customer what you are selling. Your headline should be showing the customer that your product is worth looking at. Give a brief overview of what your product can do for him or her, and emphasize the key traits of your product. The trick is to make your reader curious about the product within the first three seconds that he or she makes visual contact with your headline. Those three seconds are all they need to decide whether your product is worth looking into or not.

Simplicity Counts
Be simple with your headline. Simplicity and clarity are needed if your readers are going to read and understand your message within a single glance. Some companies prefer fanciful headlines that are long and take a few seconds to digest. That tactic might work if your target consumers are more analytical and tend to pay attention to details. However, the best approach is often the simple approach. Simple approaches increases the chance that your reader catches the gist of your headline as soon as he sees it, and would carry on reading your advertisement because he or she liked what he or she saw in the headline.

Sunny Side Up
When you write your headline, be sure to use positive terms rather than negatives. One example would be to say something "is true" rather than using a double negative to say that the same thing is "not false". The negative connotations of these words are subtle when placed in a sentence, and its overall meaning may not be affected, but negative vocabulary would leave a bad aftertaste in the mouth of the readers, so to speak, and therefore are best avoided. Moreover, be confident of your product's capabilities. Always define your product in definite terms. Avoid terms such as "may" or "should" as they introduce an element of doubt in your headline, which may lead your reader to think that you as the advertiser aren't even sure of your own product, damaging you and your product's credibility.