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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

How To Write A Good Advertisement Headline

By Frans Alderden

The success of advertisement is mostly decided by your headline, there is no denying for this fact. The headline should be attractive and motivate the reader to go through the rest of the advertisement. It also need to be simple, easy to catch the main points of benefits giving to customer when you decide to write the headline.

The headline should catch attention of the eye at the first glance. Words in headlines should act as tags for the advertisement. It should say it all about the content that follows. If a company is selling reasonably priced furniture, the headline of their advertisement should be 'Durable furniture for less price'. This headline will attract the right customers who are on a look out for durable furniture as well as low cost furniture. If the customers to be reached belong to a category that are interested in decorating their house with beautiful furniture and aren't concerned about the price to get the right look, then the headline can be 'Change how your house looks by our oriental furniture'.

The headline should be instant product seller. According to a research, five times more readers read just the headline when compared to those who read the complete advertisement. So the investment is of no use, if the headline isn't good enough to sell the product. There can be a possibility that the content of the ad isn't strong enough. All the harm can be undone by having a powerful headline.

The headline should be centered on the product and not the company that is selling the product. The customer's interest should be reflected and he should feel that he is directly addressed. Start with 'you' and not 'we'. So if the client specified on mentioning the company's name, don't start the sentence with it. For example, instead of writing 'Tylenol - solution for sever cold ', write 'Got sever cold? Try Tylenol'. Never forget to mention the name of the product in the headline. The product name should be of top priority.

A well phrased headline should include a short description of the benefits of the products, this is an important quality factor. When a customer think about buying a product, the first point is benefits. Important keywords directly related to the benefits should be included in the headline. If combine all of these factors made the headline long, the product advantage should be marked as bold. A good complement of an advertisement is place a visual element in it. A pictures speaks for thousand words. Taking care is this combination, the headline says some part of the story and the visual should say for the rest. Don't repeat the headline for picture.

Don't put so much cleverness in to the headline. There are so many advertisement in a local newspaper or web pages. A regular reader reads the headings of all of them. He or she will be able to classify between a false heading and a winning heading. No false promises or information should be included in the headline. Over smart headlines are good for award competitions, but don't really work with the savvy customers.

The headline should give out a positive feeling to the reader. Negativity should be totally excluded as it not only creates a negative impression but the mind will also be not receptive friendly. It sometimes confuses the mind and it interprets a negative meaning of the message being delivered. Confidence should be reflected in the headline. Don't include any doubtful words like if and but. Conditional phrases are a strict no. The sentence should be in present tense, instead of past or future.

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