Headed into this weekend with a 0-1 record in my main fantasy league. Send good vibes my way and turf toe vibes to my opponent. 

Now. Today’s Main Thing breaks down a big dilemma when it comes to writing the best headlines possible. 

After that, I’ll sling This Week’s Marketing Wrap-Up at ya.

Appetizer: Most people aren’t willing to do anything for 1,000 days straight, but anyone CAN, and Dan Martell says this is the payoff.

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The Main Thing

The Trouble with Headlines in 2025

You see it, I bet. But you may not’ve noticed it as much as me since I have to read a ton of stuff daily. 

And it’s easy to miss for busy marketers and business owners.

I’m talking about the trouble with headlines right now. Curiosity has always been a must. 

If your headline doesn’t make a reader (or video viewer) curious, they’ll ignore your content and move on.

However, headlines have to disclose some solid information too. So people know what they're gonna get or not get out of the full content. 

Tough to balance those two things — 1) generate curiosity while 2) giving some of the story away.

Lately it’s gotten worse. Why? Let’s set aside AI summaries and the quick answers available today. We need to focus on the growing popularity of using 100% concrete language in headlines. 

I saw this up close a few months ago.

A potential writing client of mine had done the most in-depth competitor research possible on one particular company.

That company had a strict formula for its YouTube headlines:

• Nothing vague allowed

• Numbers, percentages, dollar signs

• Case studies with people’s names & ages

The idea is → the more concrete the headline, the more likely someone would be to click on the content. Because they’re the right target viewer and know exactly what they’d get out of the video.

The headline lays it all out. The only curiosity left was exactly how the outcome was achieved or how the example person in the video climbed out of a bad situation. 

These headlines did more than the played-out hack-tastic tactic of putting a precise dollar amount (such as $12,123.58) in a headline. The idea with that tactic is that the more precise the number, the more believable the headline. 

It’s behavioral science.

But it’s been abused and splattered all over the web, so I’d bet money it’s only 50.17% as effective as it once was😉.

Seriously. It cannot work as well as in the past because it’s overused. But putting several concrete details in the headline is not played out.

And that may be the best way to get people to read your full article or hit play on your YouTube video. 

But even those headlines will get overdone at some point. 

Another problem is you can’t always use real examples. I know because the potential client I mentioned wanted to use concrete examples, but was limited by privacy concerns for the real examples he had. A catch-22.

The Bottom Line

There’s more than one way to write a great headline. 

I don’t think curiosity will ever die off. You just have to use different tactics for touching the curiosity nerve in people who can easily find an AI answer in a blink. 

So, it depends on what your content is about. How easy can someone find a solution without consuming your full article or 11-minute video?

And it depends on whether your audience even uses AI to find quick answers (not everyone is online as much as marketers and business owners). 

To get the most out of your headlines, you have to play around to see what works while also paying attention to the types of headlines used elsewhere. 

Don’t limit yourself to headlines in your industry. 

Browse a wide variety of places to spark ideas, such as:

• Reddit threads with tons of comments (what headlines got people to join the conversation?)

• App stores (titles)

• Google Reviews that stand out

• Magazine covers

• Inbox Hacking subject lines😉 

Now, let’s trip on into This Week’s Marketing Wrap-Up.

Please share Inbox Hacking with a fellow marketing genius or business owner. I appreciate you reading.

Shane McLendon - Copy Kingpin.

The zero-click web is a problem for marketers. But Americans could use a zero-click mindset for anything designed to rage-bait us.