David Ogilvy’s Advice For Writing Better Headlines

Your headline is $.80 of your $1 - here‘s how to spend it right

David Ogilvy was a brilliant marketer and copywriter. People often refer to him as the “Father of Advertising”. He was born in 1911, and he passed away in 1999. You could call his tactics old or outdated, but I’ve found them to be better than most popular marketing advice out there.

Ogilvy was obsessed with learning about consumer habits. He wanted to study why people made decisions, what made them take action and buy something.

Ogilvy is most well-known for his Rolls Royce ads. He wrote ads for Zippo, Hathaway, and a long list of other big companies. By 1972, his ad agency had written $1,480,000,000 worth of ads, and spent about $5,000,000 tracking the results.

His entire life was dedicated to advertising and marketing. And he often emphasized the importance of a winning headline.

On Medium, people see two things before deciding to read your article:

The headline
The preview image

Images are definitely an important piece of your article, but your headline is far more important. Your headline will either convince them that they need to read your article, or convince them that your article isn’t worth their time.

Whenever someone clicks on your article they’re deciding to spend their most valuable asset: their time. They can’t get those 5 minutes back.

I see hundreds of articles every week on my Medium homepage. Even if I spent my entire day reading, I’d only scratch the surface of available content. I only read articles with headlines that convince me that I need to read the full article.

Here are 5 quick headline writing tips from David Ogilvy. These are in an ad called “How to create advertising that sells” which is one of Ogilvy’s most famous ads.

Take your time

Five times as many people read the headline as the body copy. - David Ogilvy

You’ve probably heard Ogilvy’s famous Rolls Royce ad headline:

“At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock”

Many people consider this one of the greatest advertisements ever written. Ogilvy himself said it’s the best headline he ever wrote.

This brilliant headline wasn’t written overnight. This wasn’t the first headline idea that David wrote. I’ve read that he had written 60+ different headline ideas before coming up with this one. It required a lot of ideas and refining.

Most people write a headline without second thought and never take another look at it before hitting publish. On an off chance, we might write down two different headline ideas, or change the words around a bit.

We would never write down 10 or 20 or 60 headline ideas. We’ll spend 30 seconds writing a headline and an hour writing the rest of the article.

And then we wonder why we’re not writing gold like Ogilvy.

If it’s true that 5x more people will read our headline, it’s worth your time to spend an extra 15 minutes writing down 10 different headline ideas. Slow down. You can — and should — revisit your headline once you’re done with the article. And sometimes you’ll need to come back tomorrow to give it a second look.

Really think about your headline and ask yourself if it’s creative, if it communicates the right message, if it’s easy to read and understand.

Include a benefit

Headlines that include a benefit sell more than those that don’t. - David Ogilvy

Whenever you’re writing something, you’re selling something.

While you’re probably not writing product advertisements on Medium, you’re still selling. You might be selling people entertainment, a mini course, or some encouragement.

In this article, I’m selling a 5-minute course on headline writing.

The headline promised that you can read this article and learn how to write better headlines. And I told you that David Ogilvy was going to help me teach the course. The benefit is that you learn from an expert how to write better headlines, and get more eyes on your stories.

Remember that you need to convince people to give you their time. We live in a world where everyone and everything is competing for attention. There’s a reason why people need to “pay attention”. It’s not a free commodity.

If there’s no benefit in your headline, then there’s no chance that I’m going to spend my time reading your article.

Talk about recent news

Time after time, we have found that it pays to inject genuine news into headlines. - David Ogilvy

People love to stay in the know. We have a natural desire to learn about recent events and changes happening around the world. Even if the news doesn’t directly impact us, we want to know.

Including some recent news in your headline carries two benefits:

It will get people curious.
It will connect with people.

If people haven’t yet heard about the news in your headline, they’ll be curious. A big company did this yesterday? The government voted on that issue? My favorite celebrity said what?

Seeing news that we haven’t heard about makes us curious and hungry to learn more. The last thing we want is to be talking to a friend or coworker and be out of the loop.

If your reader has heard about the news in your headline, it creates a better connection. They’ll think “Oh! I heard about this yesterday- I wonder what their opinion is about it.” They’ll want to hear your perspective, or learn about how the recent news could potentially impact their life.

Scrolling through popular news websites is a great way to get new article ideas. Using recent events in your headline captures more attention.

Keep it simple

I don’t know the rules of grammar. If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language. - David Ogilvy

When writing headlines, you can’t confuse “simple” with “boring”.

Simple: easily understood or done; presenting no difficulty. Boring: not interesting; tedious.

Your headlines can’t be boring, but they need to be simple. People need to have some idea of what your article is about, while not giving away the entire article. Your headline should give people a free sample of what’s in the full article.

Don’t try to be clever or overly crafty with your wording. Give people a reason to read your article that’s easy to understand.

“Casting aspersions on the moral and ethical framework of caregiving consortium”

You’re doing what, exactly?

The average American reads at the 7th- to 8th-grade level, according to the Literacy Project. Even medical information is suggested to be written at an 8th-grade level. That means you shouldn’t be casting aspersions, or talking about ethical frameworks.

Using big words isn’t going to spark their curiosity or leave them wanting more. No one will understand what your article is about, and they won’t click on it.

Repeat your winners

Readership can actually increase with repetition — up to five repetitions. - David Ogilvy

You don’t need to always find a new topic to discuss. You can talk about the same thing over and over again. That doesn’t mean you should copy and paste articles. Instead, look at the articles that have done well and repurpose them into a new article, using a similar headline.

These two articles that Tim Denning wrote are basically the same.

They’re both lists of unimaginable/unbelievable life lessons from a well-known guru. I’m sure that Tim has published at least 10 more of these articles, and will probably publish more in the future. He has proof that they work well.

The content is different, but the headline was basically repeated.

Once you have a library of 30, 50, or 100 articles, you can start figuring out what works. I would focus on your winners, and not other people’s winners. You can certainly learn from other people’s successful headlines, but learning from your own is even better.

You have your own unique writing voice and your own audience. Your audience is following you because they like to hear from you.

When Ogilvy was writing ads for Rolls Royce, he was paying attention to the Rolls Royce winners, not the Zippo winners.

Take a look at your top-performing articles.

There’s a good chance that 5% of your articles have done significantly better than the other 95%. Are there any similarities in the headlines? Can you write a similar article with a similar headline?

Repeating your winners will help you build a stronger reputation with your audience, and your articles will become more recognizable. There are quite a few times where I can look at a headline and immediately know who the author is. They’re repeating their winners.

To sum it up, take your time writing headlines. Make sure they’re easy to understand and provide the reader with a clear benefit.

Your headlines will make or break your article, so it’s worth making the extra investment and ensuring that they’re done the best way possible.