Does Clickbait Actually Work? If Yes, Then How?
“Homicide victims rarely talk to the police”
Or, titles like,
“Murderer says detective ruined his reputation”.
It’s interesting headlines like these that tempt a user to read, listen to, or watch content.
In other words, Clickbait is pretty much a tactic to bait readers into clicking something. If done right, it’s one of the most effective strategies to grab the audience’s attention. Hence, prioritized by most content marketing services.
Although Clickbait is known for just earning page views, once you get visitors to your site, you can offer much more than just catchy headlines.
Before we dive into the details, let’s first understand,
What Is Clickbait?
It’s any piece of content that’s written with the sole purpose of attracting clicks from people visiting a website, SERP, social media, or others.
Characteristics of Clickbait Content:
- A compelling or hooking headline
- Makes a strong appeal to emotions
- Scannable and optimized for web reading
It’s not just now, but contents like these have been around us since the dawn of print journalism. Enticing headlines were used by newspapers or tabloids to grab people’s attention to a particular piece of news. Fast forward to the 21st century, those news headlines have now become the titles of blogs, ads, videos, and audio clips.
The resurrection of Clickbait titles happened with the advent of SEO and businesses trying to increase visitors to their websites. Moreover, there may be hardly anyone who, for once in their lives, did not click on titles like: “Killer tips to…”, “Winning tactics that guarantee…” or “Flat 50% discount on…”, and other similar titles. In doing so, sometimes we were happy to find what we needed and sometimes our expectations were disappointing.
Why Clickbait Is a Good Marketing Strategy?
It may be possible that Clickbait is often used to mislead users — refer to the many attractive yet misleading advertisements you may have come across on various media platforms (both traditional and digital). However, leveraging them ethically and in a meaningful way can do a lot of good for your website. Furthermore, this content marketing strategy works because it taps into the emotions and curiosity of your target audience.
Clickbait contents take advantage of the psychology of wanting to know more. It can be argued that people, in general, prefer knowing rather than not knowing about something. The anxiety of not knowing is something that drives our lives and makes us want to know more.
That’s why titles are created in a way to make the user think that they will find something new here by clicking on the link.
On an ethical note, the genuine value of Clickbait titles lies in satisfying the craving of a visitor instead of utilizing a hooking title for the sake of increasing webpage traffic.
Consequently, it’s better to consider audience interests and their pain points for creating content that will leave them satisfied and happy in the end. In reality, if a catchy title matches the content, the visitor is happy and you can avoid any audience backlash.
How Can You Use the Power of Clickbait for Good?
There is hardly anyone who doesn’t want his or her content to be read, watched, or listened to. On the other hand, the wrong usage of Clickbait could be counterproductive as it damages your reputation over time and may even bring down rankings. If you want to find out how to make the best use of a clickbait content marketing strategy, check out the points given below.
1. Research keywords to find out what the audience is searching for
Are you doing keyword research?
Keyword research is important because you want to have the target keywords in your web page titles, headings, and on-page content. Once you’ve found the target keywords through research, ensure to spread them across the content so that the search engine algorithm can find your web page relevant to those search phrases.
If you’re having difficulties in finding the target keywords, you can use tools like KeywordsFX for help. An added advantage of doing keyword research is that it allows you to understand the kind of content you should publish. Also, it helps you to identify the pages to be optimized as they are relevant to the popular target keywords.
2. Link relevant articles on your site using clickbait tactics
Internal linking is one of the best SEO practices and plays a big role in influencing traffic and the average time spent on a website. Adding relevant links to blogs and articles on your website is an excellent way to encourage readers to spend more time on a web page. Try internal linking in “recommended” areas or include links at the end of the relevant content so that you can keep the user engaged with your website.
That’s how you can make ethical use of Clickbait by not tricking readers into clicking just to make revenue off ad impressions. The ethical use of the Clickbait strategy is a great way to transform visitors into potential customers.
3. Do you write multiple headlines for your content?
It is said that eight out of ten people read the headline as most people don’t read the content completely. Although it may be alarming for a content writer, it amplifies the significance of the headlines we choose for content. It needs to be understood that multiple headlines have the power to grab the visitors’ attention even though they may not read the content.
Even though there isn’t anything like a perfect headline, when writing catchy lines we need to consider driving clicks from search and social platforms too, besides focussing on a single channel like the homepage. On top of that, multiple headlines set expectations, change thought-process, and answer questions in an engaging manner.
4. The don’ts of Clickbait
If you want clickbait to work for you, it’s important to be aware of the things not-to-do so that all your efforts do not go in vain. For starters, Clickbait titles and headlines shouldn’t be misleading. They could foster distrust among your target audience. Secondly, it’s not always essential to use enticing titles to get the reader’s attention. Informative and simple headlines could be equally impactful. Thirdly, never add call-to-actions to headlines as attempting to pitch potential customers through headlines could bring down the number of clicks that your content receives. Finally, never use Clickbait titles to get the reader’s attention for a piece of tragic news. Although it may seem tempting, it could reflect poorly on your brand.
Best Examples of Clickbait Strategies
Now that you are aware of the dos and don’ts, let’s check out some of the best Clickbait strategies of popular brands.
When Google and Shopify collaborated for promoting Shopify Premium plans, they took the best path that offered something in return to get people’s attention.
Taking advantage of the media, they put up their offer on Daily Mail, providing a Google smart speaker to anyone signing up for the premium package.
Shark Tank is a popular TV show worldwide. Although piggybacking on an established brand can help get attention, One Smart cleverly uses the name of the TV show to create a hooking title for the ad.
Final Thoughts
Even though Clickbait catches some flak now and then, it’s a brilliant marketing idea that can drive traffic and conversions simultaneously. Nonetheless, to benefit from this strategy, one should be ethical and must not mislead users by capitalizing on negative content to increase views.
Hence, if you feel that your content has the calibre to make an impact, there’s no need to stop yourself from creating hooking headlines and titles.
