A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about text ads in our newsletters. Our testing has shown significantly higher clickthrough rates and advertiser satisfaction for some offers. Let’s take a moment and discuss the most important aspect of the ad, the headline.

The headline has been called the "ad for the ad". The reader reads the headline and makes a decision right then whether to continue reading or not. Improve your headline and improve your results, it’s really that simple. Here are several thoughts to help you create winning headlines:

1. Avoid cute or entertaining headlines where the meaning might not be so obvious. Remember you won’t be there looking over the reader’s shoulder, explaining what you meant.

2. It’s good practice to highlight the biggest benefit your product offers in your headline.

3. Test your way into successful headlines. You can test the offer, the wording, the featured benefit and more.

4. The structure of the headline matters. Some copywriters always use quotes around their headlines. Others like to ask a question to draw the reader into the copy. Legendary direct marketer Ted Nicholas has a rule that the longest headline should be is 17 words. How do you know? Test.

Until next time… good selling!