Headlines are over-glorified.
“For every hour you spend writing the body, spend an additional hour on your headline.”
“Don’t write one headline, write 20.”
I'm gonna call bullshit on that one.
I mean, if deadlines aren’t a thing for you, go ahead.
But there’s a way to write effective headlines that doesn’t involve working yourself to death:
Just steal headlines from the things people say in online reviews.
It’s not that hard, and you don’t have to be a copywriter to do it.
Hopefully this gives you some insight into how to use “The Voice of the Customer” to write better headlines.
Here’s 10 examples of SaaS website headlines, re-written using online reviews:
Taken from Capterra.com:
Customers don’t buy “AI-powered online presentation tools.” They buy outcomes.
The outcome here: Looking like they’re really good at slide design, when they actually suck (but you’ll never know that).
Taken from Capterra.com:
If you’ve ever been frustrated after receiving those “Thank you for your time and consideration” (i.e. “You suck too bad for this job, goodbye”) emails, this might shock you…
But so many recruiters hate those emails too.
HR recruiters get bogged down by their own internal processes. This leads to horrible candidate communication.
Rather than being vague and “Modernize Your Recruiting Process,” BreezyHR could read their reviews and find the very specific things customers are buying their software to move away from.
Taken from Capterra.com:
Pingboard’s customers are making it so clear:
“We’re making some damn good org charts over here. Join us if you’re in the market for it!”
Patterns this clear belong on the homepage.
Taken from Capterra.com:
Customers’ reviews can be so sticky.
They’ll tell you exactly what they care about. And here, they don’t care about “Re-Imagining Physical Security.” They care about the fact that they’re falling behind security- and technology-wise because they’re still using physical keys.
Taken from Capterra.com:
Whimsical has a product that offers unique and specific value. But they don’t convey that value in their headline.
Ideal visitors who land on this homepage are looking for diagrams, POCs, flowcharts and wireframes. And they want them to be beautiful and fast.
Taken from Capterra.com:
You can find absolute gold for headlines in online reviews.
The original headline doesn’t do a bad job. It conveys impressive social proof, but “Digital Home” is extremely vague. Home for what? Assets? My hopes and dreams?
Again, customers want outcomes (i.e. all their marketing assets in one place, in a way that’s easily searchable and shareable).
Taken from G2.com:
Recurly is a fantastic and powerful software. But their headline doesn’t capitalize on it.
To beat a dead horse, customers care about outcomes.
Fiddling with billing stuff isn’t fun for them. They want to “set it and forget it”.
This new headline screams “All the other solutions are a hassle and make you do lots of work. We won’t do that because we know you’re tired of it.”
*copied
*pasted
Taken from Capterra.com:
Sometimes playing into “usefulness” makes the most sense.
Skubana customers all said the 3 things they use it to pull together:
- Products
- Fulfillment centers
- Sales channels
The new headline echoes that right back to them.
9. Clickup
Taken from Capterra.com:
“One app to replace them all” is by no means a bad headline – so this would be more something to A/B test.
Why bother? Because lots of project management tools are now positioning themselves as “The only app you need, so ditch all the other ones.”
So to avoid me-too messaging, ClickUp can agitate the “clutter” so many customers are complaining about.