When it comes to content marketing, there is little doubt that the headline is one of the most important aspects of every post you make. There are dozens of so-called experts who will be happy to give their opinion about how to write an attention grabbing, click-generating headline, but other than anecdotal evidence, they have little proof to back up their claims. BL Norwegian Business School in Oslo, Norway, however has just released their academic research on this very topic. This is one of the first, and most rigorous, actual studies on this topic. Of course, there is always a need for more study, but this study will provide marketers with some great information.
The study consisted of two experiments, the first published various headlines to Twitter, and analized what ones got the most clicks. The second had different types of headlines written for four different products on an online auction site (FINN). They then analyzed which of them got the best results.
For the auction site, here are the headlines:
• For sale: Black iPhone 4 16GB – This is the control condition.
• Anyone who needs a new iPHone 4? – This is a headline with a question, but without self-referencing.
• Is this your new iPhone 4? – This is a self-referencing headline with a question.
• We all do agree that iPhone 4 is the best phone available? – This is a rhetorical question headline.
The results of the study found that the self-referencing headline with a question performed significantly better than the others. The study is careful to point out that they did not include cultural differences. For example, while this may work in Northern European countries (where the study was done) it may not have the same results in an Asian market, or even the United States.
This study does, however, set up a good baseline that marketers can use. It could also prompt either marketers or research firms in other parts of the world to attempt to perform a similar study to help test for the cultural bias.
Dispite the fact that there are some limitations with this study, it is still an excellent source of information and statistics. This is critical, given the fact that this type of thing is normally dominated by people’s opinions backed by little more than personal experience.
You can see more about this study HERE.
