photo: annie mole

Are you ready to be excited? Are you ready to be dazzled, bedazzled and amazed? Even gob-smacked? (ancient Aussie saying). Listen up, folks – I have just found you the coolest, the most fantastic, the most amazing FREE online Marketing Analysis Tool you can imagine, EVER. Yes. This headline analysis checker is truly AWESOME! Yes. And I don’t say that lightly (unlike some, but I digress…).

There I was, plowing through endless emails, drinking too much coffee, deleting like crazy, as you do…but then…Wow!  I was following up on a lead, when I suddenly came face to face with this totally Awesome (I know, give me a break – I’m excited, OK?) Marketing Tool.  This Online Marketing Headline Checker is heaven on a stick – no, really.  So what is it, I hear you ask….drum roll, please James:

The Advanced Marketing Institute: Free Headline Analysis Checker

Update 2nd Dec 13: the link to this Headline checker has been dead for 3 days. I will leave it there in case it is a temporary hitch at their end.  However, here is another one to use in the meantime: The Lulu Titlescorer.

Headlines are maybe the most important feature of any post you publish. If you don’t grab your readers attention in that first second, your potential readers will click away onto someone else’s Headline that is more eye-catching or enticing. So, the big question we all have to ask ourselves every time we publish an article is this:

Are Your Headlines Winners or Duds? 

Here is where most of us have a follow up problem: how do we know if our Headlines are winners or duds?  That’s where this free online Tool comes in handy.  This Headline Analysis Checker will Analyse our Headlines, and tell us what we need to know.

Here is a screen shot of what it had to say about my idea for a headline for this Post:

Things to Take Special Note of in their analysis:

1. “Your Headline’s EMV Score is 40%” – Yes!  Did you get that? Really? Yes, it’s true: 40%! …. he he…eat my dust.. etc.

2. “Most professional copywriters’ headlines will have 30%-40% EMV Words in their headlines” – Yes!  I keep telling people, but nobody ever listens….

3. “Your headline also has the following predominant emotion classification: Spiritual.“ Yes! …I keep telling people, but nobody ever listens…etc, etc

Here is what The Advanced Marketing Institute say about Spirituality based Headlines:

“Your headline carries words that have a predominantly Spiritual appeal. Words that resonate with Spiritual impact are the smallest number of words in the language. AMI research has found that Spiritual impact words carry the strongest potential for influence and often appeal to people at a very deep emotional level.

Words with Spiritual impact are best used with people and businesses desiring to make an appeal to some aspect of spirituality. This does not mean religion specifically, but any product or service that resonates with “spirituality” oriented markets are appropriate.”

My Disclaimer: Spirituality does not have to have anything to do with formal religion, or the Church. Obviously, in this case, I am not referring in any way to anyone’s religion or Church.

Spirituality (the word) has a much wider meaning than just the Spirituality of Religion. Love is spiritual. Appreciation of a beautiful sunset is spiritual. A spider’s web adorned with early morning dew is spiritual – for me, anyway. You will already know what has spiritual meaning in your own lives.  We are not talking about that sort of Spirituality, we are talking Marketing and Sales.

Above all, spirituality is deeply personal, and that is good in terms of marketing.

In marketing jargon, the word Spiritual is associated with words that are believed to have an emotional impact on the reader – what this website calls Emotional Marketing Value (EMV).

In marketing circles, it is believed that emotional impact SELLS. Here’s why:

People tend to react instinctively when impacted by an emotional influence – think road rage…well, maybe not. Think about the emotional appeal of Apple products with their sleek and cool designs. You see it, even feel it, and you just want it. You might not like to admit why you want it, you just do. And people buy them in droves.

In marketing, readers are more likely to spontaneously click, join or buy, based on their feelings, as opposed to a rational assessment of value.

Emotional Impact versus Intellectual Appeal

Emotional impact is unlike intellectual appeal. Both can be good, but most marketing people claim that emotional appeal sells more stuff.  Intellectual appeal tries to persuade readers to come to a positive, rational conclusion to click, join or buy, after examining and assessing the relative worth of whatever it is, you are offering.

According to marketing research, people are less likely to part with their cash after a thoughtful, rational, decision making process, than they are to make an impulse buy after being hit with a strong emotional message. The important word in that last sentence is ‘impulse’.

How many clothing items have you bought and yet never wear?  I’m guessing there will be a few. Mostly, these would have been impulse buys. You liked it, you wanted it, and you bought it…without thinking about how many opportunities you would have when you would be likely to wear it.

Perhaps if you had thought about that at the time, and been more rational (intellectual) about the garment’s real value for you, you might not have bought the item of clothing at all.  And it wouldn’t now be buried somewhere in the back of a closet, making you feel guilty.

I’m sure we all feel passionately about our blogs, so I think that a Spiritually appealing Headline is appropriate for an article Headline – especially when it has deep impact and the potential for influencing people reading your Blog to make impulse buys: just what the doctor ordered, in fact.

Headlines with Intellectual Appeal

In contrast to Spiritual headline appeal, you could have a headline with Intellectual appeal.

This headline checker decided that my title ‘The KISS of SEO: Keep It Simple Stupid” had intellectual appeal.  I’m not sure that I agree, but anyway. Here is a screen shot of what they had to say about that headline:

“Your headline carries words that predominantly appeal to most people’s intellectual sphere. Intellectual impact words are especially effective when your goal is to arouse curiosity, and when offering products and services that require reasoning or careful evaluation. The majority of words with emotional impact in the English language fall in this Intellectual category. Intellectual impact words are the most-used of all three categories, and have the broadest appeal to people in general.

Intellectual impact words are best used to attune copy and sales messages aimed at people and businesses involved in the fields of education, law, medicine, research, politics, and similar fields. While not restricted to these groups, by giving presentations which are weighted with Intellectual impact words, your clients and customers will be more positively influenced and you are more likely to attain a more favorable response”.

So you can see the differences in the Advanced Marketing Institute’s Headline marketing analysis for Intellectual Appeal: broader appeal, good for Copy and Sales aimed at people and businesses etc.  All these things are good in a Blog headline.

However, I get the feeling from this, that it is the EMV Score that tells us most about the marketing value of any headline, rather than the specific type of Marketing appeal.

To test this theory, I entered what I thought was a bad headline and tested it….I know, it wasn’t easy to come up with a bad headline, but… I struggled mightily for the good of my readers…..and didn’t I do well!

And in case you were wondering, the Sun Headline I added at the start of this article had an EMV Score of a measly 25%. And it was classified as ‘Empathetic’ – I guess they have a point. But who are you feeling empathy for? James Blunt? The burglar? Or the guitar?  Personally, I feel most empathy for the guitar.

So there you go, folks – have fun, and knock ’em dead with High Impact Headlines, and score big time.  Now you have a handy online Free Marketing Analysis Tool to test out your latest Headline brainwaves.

Try to Beat Me!  If you can come up with a cool headline with an EMV score greater than 40%, let us know what it is. Go on, share the love. I dare you.  Show me that you can beat me – and we can all be in awe of your (awesome ) copy writing talents. I think you’ll agree with me – this Free Online Marketing Headline Analysis Tool is a real winner.

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