When crafting a headline for your piece of content, it’s crucial to keep in mind that your prospect is bombarded with hundreds of marketing messages every day. Your reader will give your headline just a second or two at best, before deciding whether to keep scrolling or to actually click your post and read it. This is your window of opportunity, and this is why your headline is so important.
The 4 U’s of great B2B headlines
To be able to decide if your article is worth the time, your prospects need your help. From just a glance, your reader needs to understand why this content is important, how it is useful and why it needs to be read now, and not some other time (which, unfortunately, often equals never).
To create headlines that answer these questions, there is a very helpful formula known as the the 4 U’s of copywriting. These are four factors that you want to stay on top of when creating the perfect B2B headline, and they all begin with a U.
1. How and for whom is this USEFUL?
Not only does your content need to be useful, but you need to effectively explain how and for whom it’s useful immediately in your headline. You want your headline to answer the question that every prospect have, which is “So what? What’s in i for me?”.
2. What makes this UNIQUE?
You need your headline to stand out, and not drown in the sea of other marketing messages. Either, you can do this buy bringing something new to the table contentwise, or by framing your subject in a new way. It can even be helpful to create a new terminology for your offer to make it stand out, a strategy that we will examine closer here.
3. Can this be told in an ULTRA-SPECIFIC way?
Sometimes all it takes to be unique is to be crystal clear and super specific. By adding details like names or numbers to your headlines, you create intrigue as well as credibility. We are hardwired to trust specific messages more than vague or general ones, and many studies have shown that for example headlines including numbers tend to catch people’s interest effectively. Adding details is also a great way of narrowing down your target group and talking even more directly to your ideal customer.
4. Why is this URGENT?
Ok, so you’ve nailed the three first U’s? Great, you’re almost there! You’ve piqued your prospects interest, they’ve noticed your message and they’ve gone “hmm, this sounds interesting”. Now you need to avoid your prospects simply going “hmm, interesting, I’ll bookmark this” and then forgetting all about you. You need to add the motivation to act now. Adding urgency means you give your reader a reason to act now instead of later. You want to create a sense of potential loss of productivity, ROI, sales or opportunities, if the prospect does not go ahead and learn more about your offer right away.
Practice makes perfect
Once you have paid attention to these four aspects, and made sure to integrate them one way or another in your headline, chances are you have a winner on your hand. Still, writing is not an exact science, and as you go along you will learn to recognise the headlines that resonate the most with your target audience.
Does this all sound like an awful lot of work, and something you’d rather not spend time on? Get in touch – we’d be happy to help you!