When it comes to driving conversions, your headline comes first.
It’s the first thing people are going to see when they land on the page — and, if you do it right, the last thing they’ll read when they click your call to action.
A killer headline is also a great way to set yourself apart from the competition.
If you want to establish an instant emotional connection with your audience and get them to keep reading the rest of your copy, we’ve got you covered.
In this guide, we’re going to dive deep into 4 of the best tips for writing killer landing page headlines – plus an added bonus tip that will make your CTAs far more effective.
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What Makes A Headline “Great”…?
Before you can understand how to write great headlines you want to understand what makes them great in the first place.
There are a few things that will make your headlines stand out among the rest.
When you understand them, it becomes significantly easier to write them.
The first is: clarity.
A great headline is going to be crystal clear to the person who is reading it.
When they land on your page, the first thing they’re going to subconsciously ask themselves is “what’s in it for me?”.
The only thing they’re interested in is how what’s on that page is going to help them with whatever problem they’re facing at the time.
You want your headline to clearly communicate how you’re going to solve that problem.
If it isn’t clear how you can help people, by the time they finish reading your headline they’re going to bounce away from the page.
On the flip side of that, though, if you make it crystal clear what’s in it for them, you have a chance to get them to read your subheadline, and your body copy, and finally make their way through your offer and into your call to action.
The second is: relevance.
The second factor to consider when you’re thinking about what makes a headline great is how relevant it is to the people reading it.
If the headline isn’t relevant to the problems they’re experiencing right now, they won’t keep reading the rest of your copy.
Think about it like this.
If you’re searching for blueprints to build a new shed in your backyard but someone puts an ad for a weight loss offer in front of you, are you going to be interested?
Unless you’re looking to build the shed by hand so you can get into better shape, that landing page isn’t going to be very relevant to you.
Chances are, you’re going to bounce from the page because you didn’t see what’s in it for you if you kept reading.
So when you’re writing headlines, make sure that the words you use actually matter to the person you want to read them.
You want to ensure that your headline resonates with the specific needs, wants, desires, greed, or pain points that your audience currently has.
The third is: specificity.
Finally, the third factor that helps make a headline great is specificity.
Being very specific about the end result of whatever promise you’re making will help your headlines pack more punch.
To give you another example, let’s assume you’re looking to lose weight & get in better shape.
But, let’s also assume that you absolutely hate going to the gym, you have bad knees and a bad back, and you want to be able to exercise from the comfort of your own home.
Which headline do you think will be more effective in this case?
“How To Lose 21 Pounds In 21 Days Without Dieting”
Or…
“How To Lose 21 Pounds WITHOUT Stepping Foot In A Gym Or Hurting Your Knees & Back”
The first headline isn’t a terrible headline.
But it’s not very specific to what the avatar you’re trying to reach actually wants.
What they want is an exercise routine that doesn’t hurt their knees and back, that keeps them out of the gym, and that lets them achieve their goal: to lose weight & get in shape.
When you’re writing a headline, make sure that you understand what your audience wants, but that you also understand what they don’t want.
This will help make your headlines even more specific to their unique wants, needs, desires, greed, and pain points.
5 Tips For Writing Killer Headlines
Now that you understand the 3 main factors that make a headline great, here are a handful of tips from today’s leading copywriters that will help you write killer headlines.
Tip #1: Your Audience Said It Best
When it comes to writing headlines that meet each of those 3 key elements, there’s one general rule of thumb you can always follow: your customers said it best.
Many times, entrepreneurs and marketers like to guess at headlines that will work.
But when you understand who your one perfect customer is, you don’t have to guess.
Instead, you can become a fly on the wall where they’re discussing the problems that your offer can solve and then relay that information back into the copy that you write.
You can also mine the information you’ve already received in the form of customer testimonials or general market research to help draw out the pain points for your headline.
Here’s a great example from Marie Forleo’s Copy Cure page:
You can see it’s a direct quote from one of the testimonials she’s received.
More importantly, though, it touches on one of the desires that people in her audience have: to be recognized for the copy and blog posts that they write.
Going deeper, you can see the bubbles use even more information drawn from her customers.
Like: “It takes me forever to write anything…”
And: “I have a lot of patience but I’m not making any sales…”
All 3 of those are things that her audience has already said — and if one person has said it, chances are other people just like them are thinking it, too.
Check out this example from Ramit Sethi’s sales page:
And this one:
Both of those headlines were pulled directly from things that people have actually said in their target markets.
Now, if you don’t have a customer base you can tap into for this information, spend some time reading Amazon reviews, getting on Reddit, sitting in Facebook groups where your audience hangs out, and look for the things they say — and the words they use.
Then use those words as your headlines.
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Tip #2: Who, What, and How
If you want to make your headlines even more effective, answer the three big questions:
Who, What, and How.
- Who is your headline designed to attract the attention of?
- What are you hoping they’ll achieve by converting?
- And how are you going to deliver on the promises you’ve made to them?
The first of those is who you’re marketing to.
If you want your headlines to grab and keep your attention, you need to make it very clear who they are for.
Take our shed building example and the headline comparison we used: one was for building sheds, and the other was for losing weight while building sheds.
If your audience doesn’t care about losing weight and just wants to build a new shed in the backyard, keep your headlines tailored to the one perfect customer you’re trying to attract to your offer.
The second is what.
What do people hope to get out of your offer — what is the end result you can promise them if they keep reading and, ultimately, take you up on the offer you’re making?
Finally, the third is how.
How are you able to make those promises to them? How can you deliver the result?
And we’re not talking about PDFs, videos, audio files, or any other deliverables here.
We’re talking about what makes you different and what you’re doing that’s different than what everyone else has been promising in order to get them the result they want to achieve.
Check out this example:
It answers all three elements.
If you want your headlines to grab and keep your attention, make sure you can answer each of those 3 elements before you get started writing.
Tip #3. Focus On The Problem & The Solution
When it comes to writing copy, problems attract and solutions convert.
The problems that you talk about solving are what will grab people’s attention and keep them reading your copy.
How you go about solving those problems and the solutions that you offer up to solve those problems are what will get people to convert and become a customer.
Think about it like Russell lays out what he teaches and what Jim breaks down in his book Copywriting Secrets.
You can either sell a vitamin → that does make people better.
Or you can sell a painkiller → that eliminates a massive problem people are having.
People can take or leave a vitamin and not really think twice about it.
But if someone is in real pain and you can provide a solution to that pain, the chances of them walking away from it are significantly lower.
You don’t want to play your entire hand in the headline, though.
Because, remember, your headline’s job is to get attention and tell people why they should keep reading.
That means you want to invoke their curiosity — but not actually close the loop you’ve opened until you get to your final call to action.
To give you an example, let’s say you’re selling a solution for people who have issues maintaining a consistent workout routine.
In your headline, you can call out the reader by asking them if they want to see a solution.
That could look something like this:
“Want To See A New Way To Stay Motivated To Workout?”
If people in your target market are reading that, they’re going to say “yes” and keep reading.
Take a look at this example from Coda, too:
It touches on both the problem and the solution.
Then the subheadline dives deeper into the pains and frustrations their reader’s experience.
Here’s another great example from Gusto:
This headline touches on the frustrations that company owners face with most payroll companies or running payroll themselves: it’s slow and prone to being full of errors.
Then, they dive deeper by teasing the solution: automated payroll.
For your headlines, don’t give too much away.
Instead, focus on saying just enough to grab attention — then build on the curiosity so you’re getting people to read the rest of your copy.
Tip #4: Offer A Transformation
Making a promise about the transformation your audience can expect to experience is one of the best ways to write a killer headline.
When people take you up on an offer you’ve made them, it’s because they believe there’s a substantial outcome on the other side of the transaction.
They’re buying into what’s going to happen AFTER they’ve purchased your offer.
If you can tell them what that end result looks like, in your headline, your copy is always going to be more effective.
And this is different from how most people write headlines, by placing the focus on the features instead of the benefits.
Think about it like this: features tell, benefits sell.
Features, as an example, would be a new smartphone with a better camera.
The benefits of that new smartphone with a better camera are being able to take professional photos so you can preserve life’s little memories.
Even though people want a new smartphone, what they’re actually buying is being able to take better photos so they can look back on all of their favorite memories.
Here’s a great example from Time Genius:
It’s two bold sentences, followed up by a subheadline that ties it all together.
The first is promising people they can take back their time.
Then, the benefit of doing that is getting back to what they actually want to do: live life.
The subheadline shifts the focus on how they’re going to help them achieve that: by working less, making more, and then touching back onto the benefit, getting the freedom they deserve.
Here’s another great example of this in action on Ramit Sethi’s blog:
In the headline, Ramit is promising his readers financial freedom, while touching on the problem they’re facing — not making enough to be truly financially free.
In his audience, one of the biggest objections people will have to his offers is that they need to make more money in order to be truly financially free.
But what Ramit teaches is different. It teaches them how to live financially free based on what they’re already earning.
Tip #5: Tie It All Together
Even though this guide is all about writing killer headlines, there’s one other element in your copy that you can’t forget about your final call to action.
Since your headline is designed to grab attention and pique your reader’s curiosity, you want to use that to your advantage by tying all of your copy back together.
By tying the specific benefit from your headline into the call to action you use, you’re specifically reminding people why they started reading in the first place.
To give you an example, let’s use the headline from above:
“Want To See A New Way To Stay Motivated To Workout?”
By the time your reader has made their way through the copy, you want to remind them why they started reading in the first place.
Tying this big benefit back into your final call to action is a great way to do it.
Here’s what your CTA could look like:
“Click here to use this new strategy to stay motivated & consistent in your workouts.”
Using this strategy helps close the loop and remind them of the big benefit or promise and the reason they should click through to purchase the offer you’ve made for them.
And that’s what makes your headlines even more effective — getting the conversion.
This is something we cover in detail inside the Copy Quick Start Secrets course.
Final Thoughts
When you understand the tips that we’ve laid out here, it’s significantly easier to write headlines that grab and keep attention.
Spend some time practicing each of the tips that we’ve given you in this guide.
Then, we recommend split testing headline ideas using something like ClickFunnels’ A/B testing features to show you exactly which headline is getting the highest conversion rates.
It will let you test one idea against another and automatically split traffic between the two tests so you can see a clear winner.
Remember, though, that you only want to test one element of your copy at a time.
That means comparing a headline and subheadline against another rather than changing the entire body copy, images, calls to action, etc.
Before long, you’ll be writing killer headlines the first time, every time.