You know your audience, your marketing campaign goal and tactics to implement. Now comes the tough part. What do you say?
Writing the perfect headline is a key part of creating a campaign that stands out and drives results – whether it’s purely a brand awareness campaign or you’re trying to generate leads or sales. Ensuring your campaign has a unique, memorable headline that commands attention is the first step in your audience taking a desired action.
Here are three questions to ask yourself before you launch your next campaign.
“Know yourself, know your audience,” is a good mantra to keep in mind when evaluating any campaign headline. Is the headline authentic to your brand while still cutting through the clutter? Revisiting your brand voice and style helps ensure your campaign works well within your brand’s guidelines.
Some brands can push the envelope with edgy headlines made to raise eyebrows. Other brands or subject matter need to strike the perfect balance of being creative but with a safer approach.
One great way to determine whether your headline is on-brand is to do the “logo test.” Gather the latest campaign headlines from your company as well as your top competitors. Now, remove the logos of each respective company and read each line. Does your headline sound like you, or is it something anyone could say? If the messaging sounds the same as your competitors, that means there’s a real opportunity to differentiate.
As marketers we often think, “what do we want our audience to do?” Instead, we should ask, “how do we want our audience to feel?”
The best brands communicate like people do. That means infusing emotion. Instead of strategizing how we’ll get our audience to click through to a landing page, we should be asking about their emotional takeaway. Will they feel peace of mind and confidence? Maybe they’ll feel inspired or be surprised with a laugh or introspection. No matter the campaign, that’s the true goal – and it’s what builds your brand long term.
There are many ways to make a headline evoke emotions – from borrowed interest to idioms to rhymes and sarcasm. Virtually any message can be made more interesting through tools like alliteration, puns and even cultural references. A bold headline coupled with engaging design creates the true one-two punch of winning creative.
Our audiences think in a blink. Will they stop and read your message? Or will they scroll on by?
At MindFire, our creative briefs always define the “single most important thing” to get across in a campaign. That detail should get to the core of your campaign message – what’s the one thing you want your audience to walk away knowing? This can be a challenge because usually we want to say as much as possible. But nine times out of 10, less is more.
When you’re looking at your latest campaign, ask yourself if it passes the “grunt test.” That is, if a caveman looked at your ad for one or two seconds, would they know what it’s for? If it feels convoluted or too lengthy, it might be worth finetuning your headline.
When you need help with messaging or creative, we’re here to help!
