Affiliate Marketing Headlines: 7 Tips for Writing Effective Copy + Examples

Headlines are one of the most important elements to any affiliate marketing campaign.

Whether they be for a paid ad, a blog post, or a landing page, they’re the introduction to your sales funnel for the person you’re targeting.

Without a great headline, people are never going to see the rest of your copy and therefore never generate a conversion.

Fortunately, writing great headlines just requires some practice and experience. Something we’re going to help give you by providing seven things you can do to instantly improve your headlines.

1. Our Brains like Numbers

According to a study by BuzzSumo, the top two best performing headline types for creating engagement on Facebook both include numbers in the headline. 

People naturally gravitate towards numbers in copy for two reasons:

1. It promises substance. 

2. They’re naturally attractive to the human brain. 

You’ll notice we applied this tip in our own headline above.

The ‘7 Tips’ in our headline tells you right away that there’s something of value within the content. It also quantifies that value, which your brain likes because it essentially gives you seven opportunities to find useful information. 

With just a single character, you can immediately improve your chances of someone clicking on your ad, engaging with your post, or reading your landing page.

EXAMPLE: X Ways to Get Your Dream Body by New Years 

2. Be Straight-forward

Just because you thought of a witty pun to include in your headline doesn’t mean it’s going to entice people to click your ad or post. You might just be confusing the reader and detracting from the purpose of your content. 

It’s important to keep your headlines obvious and relative to the rest of your copy. 

Including uncommon words or phrases is another way you can clutter up your headlines. Instead, ditch the thesaurus and stick to simple, strong language that ensures readers understand your message. 

EXAMPLE:

Don’t: This Tech Gadget can immediately revolutionize your living situation 

Do: This Tech Gadget can Improve Your Life Right Now 

3. Ask the *Right* Questions

Although they won’t work for every type of headline, questions can be a great way to automatically engage users. 

When you see any written question, do you automatically try to answer it in your head without even trying? You just did, didn’t you? We can’t help it. Answers simply satisfy our brains. 

You can use this to your advantage in your headlines by asking the appropriate questions. The goal is to make the person reading it feel as though they need that question answered. Therefore, you shouldn’t be asking questions that can be easily answered with a “yes” or “no”. 

EXAMPLE: Are You Making This Fixable Mistake Every time You Cook?

The above question is not actually possible to answer without reading more. This should be a component of any headline question you use in affiliate marketing. Just make sure not to ask misleading ones that are going to turn readers away when they don’t actually find the answer. 

4. Sweet Emotion

Words can be powerful. The right ones can even trigger an emotional response in our minds. 

Using those words in your headline is one of the best ways to instantly captivate a reader. 

We recommend using words that can specifically trigger a positive emotional response. Words that can elicit feelings like strength, wisdom, and thoughtfulness. 

Here are just a few examples: 

• Conquer 
• Eye-Opening 
• Stunning
• Unbelievable
• Fulfill
• Lovable
• Heartwarming
• Marvelous
• Uplifting

When using such strong words, it’s important to remain genuine. Throwing these around aimlessly with hyperbole can quickly turn your headline into clickbait, leaving a bad taste in the mouth of the people you’re targeting. 

EXAMPLE:  Conquer Your Fitness Goals with These Eye-Opening Gym Hacks

5. Keywords Come First

This one’s pretty self-explanatory but quite important if you’re writing headlines for pages that rank on search engines. 

Starting your headlines with keywords you want to rank for has been proven to have a positive impact on your SEO because it makes it easier for Google to “understand” your content. Therefore, you should do everything you can to put them at the beginning. 

This can sometimes be tricky, so try splitting headlines into “parts” using colons or dashes to make it easier to position your keywords first. Scroll back to the top of this page and you’ll see we applied this tip to our own headline. 

Putting the most important and relevant words at the beginning of your headline also ensures people immediately understand what your ad, page, or post is about. This can increase the chances of them exploring the rest of your sales funnel. 

EXAMPLE: Affiliate Marketing Headlines: 7 Tips for Writing Effective Copy

6. Mind Your Length  

An overly long headline is one of the simplest campaign elements that can negatively impact your optimization. 

Everything from search engines to social ad platforms have ideal headline lengths, and not adhering to them could kill your campaign’s potential. 

As a rule of thumb, try to keep your headline as concise as possible while ensuring your message is still sensically conveyed 

Here’s some specific suggest lengths to try and stick to depending on what your headline is for:  

Facebook Ads: 25-40 characters

Google Search Results: 45-55 characters

Socially Shared Posts: 8 – 12 words

EXAMPLE: Start Saving More with Smarty Plus Cashback

7.  Apply Traditional Copywriting Fundamentals

Ultimately, a great headline is great copy. By following some timeless copywriting tips that are tried, tested, and true, you can instantly make your headlines more attractive and increase engagement.

Here are some of our favorites that never go out of style:

• Speak to the reader by including ‘you’ ‘your’ and ‘you’re’. 
• Use words that commonly ‘how’ ‘what’ ‘when’ and ‘why’
• Write how people actually talk
• Use simple but strong language
• Focus on benefits instead of features (how the product/service improves your life)