David Ogilvy in Confessions of an Advertising Man in 1963, said
‘On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.’
Fifty years on, this might still be true for all advertisers today, including nonprofits.
Nonprofit fundraising is hugely dependent on donor engagement. Running a great campaign is a way to achieve this. But it gets difficult to attract people’s attention initially. As content writers most of us focus on quality content and that our content is relevant to the audience and the social media channel we are using, but more often than not, some of us tend to overlook one of the most crucial part of creating great content, i.e. creating click-worth titles!
Having a catchy title will hook people’s imagination and compel them to delve further – delivering better results for your nonprofit fundraising campaign. It is a matter of some planning, preparation and research to create that perfect title.
Here are some tips that you should keep in mind while writing your nonprofit campaign title.
Be Descriptive
Don’t be overly coy, clever or mysterious with your campaign title. You need to have your target audience connect with it which engages them further and entices them to click. Be descriptive and give people a clear idea of what your campaign is about.
Keep it short
You need to be descriptive in your title, yet keep it short. Having a long title could make it boring. Think of ways on how you could creatively accommodate what your campaign is about,, in a short title. Moreover Google cuts off its listing titles at around the 66 characters mark. You need to keep this in mind while deciding on your title.
Provoke curiosity
The only way to have a larger audience connect with your campaign is to ensure that your content is phrased in a way which catches people’s curiosity and compels them to learn more.
Make it searchable
To catch the eyeballs, you need to reach out to as big a audience as you could. Including keywords that people are using in search engines such as Google and YouTube is the best way to do this. You could make use of the Google Keyword Tool to search for popular keyword phrases that could reflect what you are trying to say. Focus on the ones which have a high number of searches but not a decent competition. These are the keywords which are mostly likely to get your campaign on the first page of Google search results.
So these were a few tips to help you write headlines that bring readers to your site, titles that are click worthy and shareable. This will not only increase your fundraising chances but, also improve the website authority, helping you build a stronger brand.
Pro tip: Think of titles as a great teaser, like a movie trailer and not the main attraction or the place to share all the details. Keep it concise and make sure it is not misleading.
