How to Write a B2B Headline That Captures Your Audience

How to Write a B2B Headline That Captures Your Audience

Much like an unkept storefront can deter potential customers from doing business at a brick-and-mortar establishment, a subpar headline can dissuade your audience from reading your online copy or engaging with your content. This has never been truer for B2B headlines.

Buzzsumo recently published an analysis of 10 million articles shared on LinkedIn which found common features in headlines that resonate with B2B audiences.

It Takes Two to Make a Thing Go Right

Just as a good headline acts as an appetizer for your post’s main dish – the copy – the first two words of your headline are critical in determining the level of engagement with your audience. Perhaps unsurprisingly, by far the most effective two-word combo kicking off effective B2B headlines is ‘how to’, which was utilized almost three times more frequently than any other word pairing.

Thrice as Nice

Where the data shows that two-word combos are most widely used in headlines for ‘how to’, list, and ‘what’ and ‘why’ posts, effective three-word combos at the beginning of engaging B2B headlines include phrases such as ‘x ways to’, ‘the future of’, ‘x things you’ and ‘how to get’.

All the Single Wordies

It should be no surprise that words such as ‘the’, ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘what’ fall within the top ten of most common single words that start engaging B2B headlines. However, the data has also shown that references to corporate giants such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are capturing attention more than ever.

A Numbers Game

Oftentimes marketers have a lot of information to share but are at a loss as to exactly how many tips, things or ways should be featured in one piece. According to the data, ‘5’ and ‘10’ are the most powerful digits when it comes to B2B headlines. A distinction should be made between headlines used in a business context versus those used in B2C, where the number 10 rules the roost.

It’s the End of the Headline, and I Feel Fine

Just as the beginning of a headline can be critical in capturing your audience’s attention, the end of a headline can bring much needed immediacy or context to your content. In this sense, ‘… In The World’, ‘…Need To Know’ and ‘…Of The Year’ were the most effective ways of wrapping up B2B headlines.

Long Enough to Cover the Subject, But Short Enough to Make It Exciting

Data from the analysis shows that Facebook engagement is strongly correlated to headline length, as those with over 15 words received higher viewership on average. However, shorter headlines appear to be more effective in a B2B context, with a sweet spot of between 7 to 12 words.

The next time you or a colleague are tasked to write a B2B headline that needs to connect with your unique audience, rely on these data-backed words, phrases and numbers to get the job done. To view the complete 2017 Most Shared B2B Headlines Study, click here: buzzsumo.com/blog/how-to-write-engaging-b2b-headlines