How to Write a Great Headline (with Rob Marsh)

Executive overview

Five times more people read a headline than the body copy. A weak headline loses the reader before they start. A strong headline grabs attention, targets a problem, and promises a solution in the customer's own voice.

Start with customer research — understand the problem, the product, and how customers describe it. Then plug those words into a formula.

The fastest path to a good headline: match a proven formula to your customer's exact language.

What a good headline does

• Communicates clearly — no cleverness for its own sake
• Grabs attention and signals "keep reading"
• Targets the customer's pain or problem
• Promises a benefit or solution
• Uses the customer's own voice

Three headline formulas to use

1. How to [blank] even if [blank] — positions the benefit against a common objection or skill gap. Works well on homepages. Example: "How to write a book even if you failed 11th grade English."
2. How to [blank] like [blank] — pairs a desired benefit with an aspirational expert or role model. Works on product pages and subheads. Example: "How to save money like a professional accountant."
3. [Number] reasons why [blank] — leads with curiosity and implies withheld information. Works on blog posts and educational content. Example: "Three reasons why your doctor isn't telling you the truth about your diet."

Why formulas work

• Proven to perform — they work because they've been tested
• Save significant time — writing 500 headlines from scratch took one writer 200 hours
• Not plagiarism — you replace the blanks with your own product, problem, and customer language
• A formula is a scaffold, not a final headline

The step most people skip

• Formulas fail without upfront customer research
• Know the product, the problem it solves, and the customer's situation when they go looking
• Know how customers talk about the product — those are the exact words that go into the formula
• Research first, then write: the combination nearly guarantees a working headline