You have your eyes set on the goal: a native ad that will boost your website or offer’s performance. You have collected all the things you need: a careful curation of relevant content, images, videos, products. It’s time to publish, but you realize you’re missing one thing: a headline.
Sound familiar? No, no one’s reading your mind or spying on you. As much as you feel that you are unique and that you have something different to offer, all ad creators have a common roadblock in their creative processes: and that’s why this sounds all too familiar.
Regardless of how informative, creative, or useful your content is, your ads will not become successful unless your target audience clicks on it. As an advertiser, you should know that the click-through-rate is where all measurable potential leads come from. Without it, you cannot actually see a clear sales pipeline, so here are some things to remember to get started on getting those clicks all of us (and yes, even your competitors) are aiming for.
You have about 3 seconds to capture your audience’s attention, and it’s within those 3 seconds that you could get that sweet, sweet click before your audience scrolls down and moves on to the next content.
Whether you like it or not, your audience has evolved and now has even much shorter attention spans. As such, you need to keep your headlines short, concise, yet captivating.
And speaking of captivating...
Humans are designed to respond to stimuli — and fear is one of the easiest ways to get your audience into “fight or flight” mode. Whilst we do not condone fear-mongering, inciting “fear” to a certain extent can make people click on your headline.
Tapping into that part of the human psyche could prove to be very fruitful in making native ads headlines. Successful YouTubers are well aware of this, and that’s why you might have noticed (and clicked on) those ads that lead you to content that you didn’t even know you were interested in.
You don’t have to “scare” your audience to the extreme, but building the “fear” up well enough to create a sense of urgency and make them more inquisitive could create a more lasting effect than simply stating facts.
With that in mind...
Take this for instance: a car manufacturer creates a car that touts “safety for your whole family” — which is in and of itself something that a lot of consumers can relate to. However, for the casual onlooker online, seeing a headline that says “Your Safety Is Our Priority” might sound so unoriginal that they would think it’s not worth their time to click on it.
This also seems like a very traditional way to advertise, which will not make you stand out from the competition.
A better headline for this would be something like “Is Your Family Safe From This?” — this not only taps into your audience’s fears, but it also sparks their curiosity: “what is “this” exactly?”
With just a simple tweak, you’ve managed to make your audience ask questions and decide to seek for an answer — which of course they would have to find out by clicking on your ad.
Numbers are as important to accountants as they are to any competent advertiser. No matter how hard you try, your audience would not be able to realize the benefits of what you’re trying to sell unless you allow them to imagine themselves in a position where they would be needing what you are selling. To do so, you can add numbers to your native ad headlines.
In relation to the previous section, “3 Ways You’re Putting Your Family In Danger” or “5 Dangerous Mistakes You’re Making While Driving” could be better options for your headlines.
You could also use numbers in giving percentages to really give your audience a point of reference, such as “80% Of Drivers Are Losing Their Families Because Of This” or “60% Of Road Accidents Are Caused By This Simple Mistake”.
As they always say: the numbers don’t lie.
In conclusion, creating an ad with headlines that create an instant appeal to your target audience should be easier with a good strategy — and that strategy involves not only being creative but also combining various methods that have been proven successful in the world of online advertising.
Creating a headline is not easy, and creating a headline that actually converts is even more difficult — but it doesn’t have to be. If you follow the tips above, chances are your ads will perform better and take you onwards and upwards to more successful campaigns.
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