You will write a large set of headlines for one page and choose three using clear criteria and reader feedback.
Twenty-five headlines for one page sounds like too many. It is the right number. The first ten you write will be the obvious ones, the headlines any competitor could have written. Somewhere after that you run out of easy ideas and start working from your research, and that is where the good ones tend to appear. This exercise makes you get there, then gives you a fair way to choose.
Allow about 30 minutes for writing and scoring, plus time to show your shortlist to three people. You need your voice-of-customer file, the five patterns from lesson 2.2, and a page or post you are about to write. Priya used the landing page for her free trial lesson, and her work is the worked example below.
Write fast and do not delete anything. Use every pattern from lesson 2.2 at least twice, and start at least ten headlines from exact phrases in your file. If you get stuck, take one phrase and try it as a how-to, a problem, an outcome, a question and a number.
Priya's first ten were close to what every centre says: "Free trial maths lesson", "Try our P5 maths class for free", "Quality maths tuition near you". Around number twelve she opened her file and the headlines changed: "Knows it at home, goes blank in the exam", "Groups of six, so the teacher checks every child's working", "Try one Saturday class before you pay for a term".
Score every headline from 1 to 3 on each of these:
Clarity: would a stranger understand it on first read? Specificity: does it point at something real, such as a person, a situation, a number or a time? Relevance: does your file show that your target reader cares about it? Believability: would your reader believe it, and can you back it?
That gives a total out of 12. Treat the scores as a way to compare headlines with each other. Two people would score the same headline a little differently, and that is fine. What the scoring does is stop you choosing the headline you are proudest of rather than the one that does the job.
Here are three of Priya's, with her scores in the order clarity, specificity, relevance and believability:
"Quality maths tuition near you" scored 3, 1, 1 and 2, a total of 7. Clear, but it could belong to anyone, and "quality" is something every centre claims.
"Help your child reach their potential" scored 2, 1, 1 and 1, a total of 5. Vague, and parents in her file never talked about potential.
"Try one Saturday class before you pay for a term" scored 3, 3, 3 and 3, a total of 12. It answered the objection that came up most in her file, the worry about paying for something the child might hate.
Take your five highest-scoring headlines and show them to three people in your target group. They should be real potential customers or people very like them, not your business partner or your mother. Priya asked two parents from her estate and one from a school group she belonged to.
Show the five together and ask two questions: which of these would you click, and why? Then stay quiet and write down their words. Do not explain the headlines or tell them which one you prefer.
The reasons matter more than the votes. One parent picked "Knows it at home, goes blank in the exam" and said "because that's literally my son". Another picked the Saturday trial headline and said "I don't want to commit to three months". The third said none of them told her the class was for P5, which was a problem Priya had not noticed in any of the five.
Choose your three. You might use one as the page headline and the other two as ad variations or an email subject line. For each, write a sentence on why you chose it. Quote your readers where you can.
Priya chose "Try one Saturday class before you pay for a term" for the landing page, with "For P5 and P6" added to the line above it after the third parent's comment. She kept "Knows it at home, goes blank in the exam" for an ad aimed at parents who had not yet decided on tuition. The third was "Groups of six, so the teacher checks every child's working", for parents comparing her with a home tutor.
Do not delete the other 22. Paste them into a section of your voice-of-customer file headed "headlines". Many will become ad variations in lesson 4.4, subject lines in lesson 4.5, or hooks for posts later. A headline that was wrong for a landing page can be exactly right for a different reader at a different stage.
Your finished work for this exercise is 25 headlines, a score for each, notes from three readers in their own words, and three choices with a reason beside each. Start with the page you most need to improve, because the three headlines you choose will go straight into the work in modules 4 and 5.
Write 25 headlines for one landing page or post, score them on the four criteria, test your top five with three people and pick three.
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