Pay Attention! This is something you don’t want to miss!

I’m going to show you how to modify your site’s headline so that it captures the interest of your ideal audience and gets them to keep reading.

The goal of the first sentence in copywriting is to get you to read the second sentence, according to Robert Bruce from Copyblogger. This is definitely true, but for a website headline, we actually have to accomplish even more than that.

In a website headline, especially for the homepage, we need to let the visitor know that they’re in the right place and that we have what they’re looking for (whether they know what that is or not). A good homepage headline should tell visitors what you do, who you serve, and why you’re different in no more than 1 or 2 short sentences or phrases. I covered the basics of this in my earlier blog on Attracting the Right Visitors With This Easy Headline Formula. If you haven’t read it yet, I’d encourage you to start there.

First a quick recap–

Header on Website - what is it?

Your website header is the first headline that your visitors will see. Before you scroll, there should be a headline that invites the reader into your site and tells them who the site is for so they know they’re in the right place.

With the basics of your site’s headline written, it’s time to flush out the different components so that we can rewrite it in a way that resonates strongly with your visitor and turns them into a customer – which really is the ultimate goal of most websites - to convert visitors to customers. Right? Get them hooked on something they care about and they’re far more likely to keep reading and ultimately take the next step.

So without further ado let’s improve on our basic what, who, and why headline.

1) Start with your Keyword

For any business, being found online is key to generating traffic. Future blog posts will focus more on this strategy called SEO or Search Engine Optimization. For now, we’ll keep it simple and just recognize that for any business, there should be at least one target keyword that you choose for your website.

The strategy on this can be simple or complex, but let’s just say that you’re a plumber wanting to be found for “plumbing repairs” in “Portland”. If this is the case, you’ll want both your location and your service to be keywords in your headline. This will help Google to understand what it is your business offers so they can bring people to you.

If you can make your main SEO keyword the first part of the sentence all the better. But don’t sacrifice quality for an awkward-sounding headline.

2) Ideal Client

We are already specifying who your customer base is in the headline. The next thing we want to consider is who we are writing this for. This is different from who our customer is.

Think about who you’d love to work with. Ideally, you have a few target clients that you’d love/are trying to land. Let’s write this headline with the purpose of closing the deal with them. For this exercise, pick 1-4 of past clients that you’d like to work with again. Write down their name(s). When we’re writing this headline, we’re going to write it with them as a representation of our ideal client in mind. It helps to put a specific person or business down.

For my headline, I had 4 different people targeted. They all fell within my ideal customer range and had similarities, but also had different needs and personalities. Using this tactic helped me find the sweet spot with a headline that would speak the strongest to the specific clients I wanted to work with.

When writing the header on your website, it’s key to have it speak to that ideal client because even if all your visitors aren’t your “ideal clients” they’re the ones we want to feel most at home.

3) Customer Fears & Desires

Thinking about the Ideal Client(s) you identified, what are some of their fears or desires as they relate to your business?

The goal here is to get to the heart of what is driving your customer’s decision-making. Decision-making is often emotionally based, and as business owners, it’s easy to get caught up in the practical/rational mindset. You should choose us because we offer XYZ. But as a customer, I respond subconsciously to messaging.

Now I’m gonna let you in on a simple marketing secret… this ‘subconscious’ level is often thought of as listening to your gut. In reality, it’s a combination of things. By knowing what the customer wants or needs and responding to it, the customer feels as if you get them.

By taking the time to research your customer and paying attention to their needs, we can construct our processes to answer those needs. So the customer’s ‘gut’ tells them that you’re a safe choice because you’ve done the work to really understand them.

So let’s dig into our customer’s fears & desires.

The fear-based approach, while it sounds negative, really isn’t (or doesn’t have to be). You can approach this in two ways. Fear of the problem that is driving them to need your service, or the fear of what’s holding them back from purchasing your service. This can be very effective depending on what type of business you’re in. The goal is to alleviate their fears.

For example, if I’m a roofer, your fear could be that not fixing your roof will lead to bigger problems down the road. OR, your fear could be that it’s so expensive you won’t be able to afford it – in which case you can address the fear by telling people before they have a chance to object that you offer no interest payment plans, or that they won’t have to replace the roof again for 20 years.

So you can highlight one of their fears as a reason to buy your service or product, or you can proactively address their fear to put it at ease. Really this is about telling people how you’ll make their fears go away.

The other approach is the desire approach. I like this approach because it appeals to our human nature. If you’re a spa owner, it’s pretty clear that it would be better in most cases to highlight their desires rather than their fears. But this can work with the roofer as well. Maybe you sell solar panels and want to appeal to people’s desire to be more environmental. Think about your ideal client’s goals – what is the desire behind those goals? Is it a more relaxing yard or a brighter smile, or to be your healthiest self?

Let’s encourage, empower, and inspire your customers to reach those goals.

So how do we do that when writing the header on our websites? I have 2 options for you:

Alleviate their fears

· A fear, if they don’t buy my service/product, is:

· A fear holding someone back from purchasing my service/product is:

Appeal to their desire

· A desire driving them to purchase would be:

4) Features vs. Benefits

Sometimes it’s not apparent to the business owner exactly what makes their business unique. In this case, it may help to write out the features of your product or service. List them all out. Then highlight the features that your competitors can’t or don’t offer, or perhaps it’s something that you do differently. You may have several unique features. If you don’t have any, it would probably be good to look at how you can create a competitive advantage.

Your business’s key features could be about your product, your process, or the customer experience.

Once you’ve got your features listed, you want to drill into the benefits that come from those great features. Features are about your company and your product or service. Benefits tell me as a potential customer exactly how I benefit from your service. Benefits are the emotionally-driven sell and key features are the why. People argue that customers don’t care about features. But for a skeptical consumer like myself, I like to know why a product can promise XYZ. So features that really make your product or service different are important to call out, but that can come later on in the copy to substantiate your benefit claims.

For example:

Feature: Custom software that automates a task

Benefit: More time to spend running my business

Since we already have a differentiator, what we’re looking for here is an emotional component or a clear takeaway for the customer. This may not always fit into the header on website but if you can include it in a natural way, all the better. If you get stuck here, go back to those fears and desires we talked about earlier.

5) Tagline Brainstorm Session

Now put it all together:

What you do, who you serve & what makes your business different.

Take 20 minutes or so, and write down several variations of this. Hopefully, the copy you wrote out above will spur different ideas. Try to think outside the box. There isn’t one way to write a tagline, but you want to play with the word choice, the order, using analogies, writing for a specific customer, etc. Try using some of the prompts below for variety.

1. Fear-based version

2. Desire based version

3. Emotional appeal – How does your customer feel about their problem?

4. Attention-getting headline – try using a number like “85% of Portlanders agree that…”

5. Problem/Solution headline – ie. Experiencing __? We can help by ___.

6. Benefit headline

7. Witty version - if you can do it right, humor can be a great way to keep people’s attention.

8. Use an analogy – “___ is like___”

9. Start with your SEO keywords

6) Edit, Edit, Edit

Now read back through your headlines and look for the gold nuggets. Highlight any part of any taglines that you like. Cut out the crappy versions that don’t resonate. Work with the headlines you like best, mixing and rearranging. Then I just play with it until it feels right.

One tool I love to help determine your best headline is the Headline Analyzer. There is a free version of this, and a paid version. I find the paid version to be a really amazing value given that I use it for both mine and my client's websites as well as blog posts and even email subject lines. (Note: I’m not being compensated for promoting them – I just really love the service and the time it saves me!)

Some of my favorite editing tricks are listed below – these can be used instead of, or even better – in conjunction with the Headline Analyzer:

a. Is there an emotional appeal or a hook to keep you reading?

b. Is the focus on your customer? Hint: if it starts with “we” or “our” you’re probably more focused on your feature than the customer’s benefit.

c. Read them with the skepticism of a customer who doesn’t know you yet. Would it convince you to keep reading?

d. Can you shorten it? It’s not necessary to use complete sentences here and follow standard grammar.

e. Like writing a resume, this needs to be as strong and succinct as possible. Use action words & emotional words wherever possible. Our goal is to motivate action. Instead of “We help business owners file their taxes on time.”, try “File your business’ taxes faster and with more accuracy.”

f. Does the headline answer who you serve, what you do, and what’s unique about your service?

g. read the headline and think about your competitor. Could the same headline be used for their business? If so, it’s possible you’re not specific enough or that you didn’t correctly identify your unique selling point. Go back to step 4.

h. Sometimes in order to be succinct, you can’t fit everything into one sentence. That’s ok, you can use a subheading to cover the rest. Often I find that the Who and/or where you serve is best as a secondary line.

i. Read it out loud.

6) Ask a friend or customer

Once you’ve honed in on one or two versions, you should get an outside opinion. Try it out on a couple of people what they think of it. You could pick your top 2 and do a short poll to see which is the most effective. Always leave room for open-ended answers because sometimes the best ideas come from people who aren’t as close up as you are.

Now you should have the makings of a strong website headline. The nice thing about websites is that nothing is set in stone. You can test it out and if you need to make changes, that’s easy to do. But hopefully, your new headline goes a long way in clearly telling your customer what you do and how your service will make their life better!