An editor decides whether to open your press release in the time it takes to read the headline. Call it two seconds. Everything else you wrote is downstream of winning those two seconds. The good news: press release headlines are formulaic, and the formula is learnable in one sitting.
The six rules
1. State the news as a fact, in present tense. A headline is a sentence with a subject and a news verb: raises, launches, opens, hires, acquires, partners, reports, cuts. "Announces" is technically a news verb but a weak one, so announce the thing, not the announcing.
2. Keep it under about 80 characters. Google truncates around 60, email subject lines around 70, and wire feeds vary. Under 80 keeps you safe everywhere, and shorter is almost always stronger.
3. Lead with the most recognizable noun. If a famous investor, customer, or partner is involved, they go in the headline. "Acme Raises $4M Led by Sequoia" beats "Acme Closes Oversubscribed Seed Round."
4. Include a number when you have one. Dollars, customers, percentage, square feet, headcount. Numbers are the fastest credibility signal in the language, and an editor scanning 200 headlines stops on digits.
5. Ban the banned words. Revolutionary, innovative, game-changing, cutting-edge, world-class, excited, thrilled, proud. These words don't describe news. They describe the absence of it. If your product genuinely changes the game, a specific fact will say so more convincingly.
6. Write it last. The headline is your release's one sentence, compressed. Write the release first (here's the full step-by-step), then compress.
Funding headlines
- Bad: "Finwell Announces Successful Completion of Series A Financing Round"
- Good: "Finwell Raises $8M to Bring Payroll Advances to Hourly Retail Workers"
- Bad: "Local Startup Secures Major Investment"
- Good: "Portland's Trellis Raises $2.5M Seed Led by Foundry Group"
The pattern: amount + purpose, or amount + lead investor. "Successful completion" is throat-clearing, because every closed round completed successfully. The funding template builds the rest of the release around this headline shape.
Product launch headlines
- Bad: "Corva Unveils Revolutionary New Platform to Transform Fleet Management"
- Good: "Corva Launches Fuel-Fraud Detection That Cut Pilot Fleets' Costs 11%"
- Bad: "Introducing the Next Generation of Kitchen Innovation"
- Good: "Stovetop App Now Plans a Week of Family Meals for Under $75"
The pattern: what it does + measured result, or what it does + concrete number. "Unveils" and "transform" are launch-headline slop. The measured pilot result is the actual news. More launch structure in the product launch template.
Hiring and leadership headlines
- Bad: "Nexa Health Strengthens Leadership Team With Key Executive Appointment"
- Good: "Nexa Health Hires Former Oscar Health CTO Dana Wu to Lead Engineering"
- Bad: "New Chief Revenue Officer Joins Growing SaaS Company"
- Good: "Brightline Names Kroger Veteran Sam Ortiz CRO Ahead of Retail Push"
The pattern: the hire's most recognizable credential + the role + (optionally) what it signals. The person's prior company is usually more newsworthy than yours, so use it. Structure the rest with the new hire template.
Partnership headlines
- Bad: "Strategic Partnership Announced Between Two Industry Leaders"
- Good: "Reef Logistics Partners With Instacart to Offer Same-Day Pharmacy Delivery in 40 Cities"
- Bad: "Companies Join Forces to Deliver Enhanced Value to Customers"
- Good: "Toolbelt and Home Depot Pilot In-Store Repair Booking in Texas"
The pattern: both names + what customers actually get. If the headline can't say what the partnership does for a customer, editors suspect (usually correctly) that the answer is "a joint logo slide." See the partnership template for the supporting structure.
Award and milestone headlines
- Bad: "Lumen Legal Honored With Prestigious Industry Recognition"
- Good: "Lumen Legal Named to Inc. 5000 After Tripling Revenue in Two Years"
- Bad: "Company Celebrates Major Customer Milestone"
- Good: "Ferry Reaches 100,000 Riders 14 Months After Launch"
The pattern: the specific award or number + the growth fact behind it. The award alone is weak news. The trajectory it evidences is the story.
Data and report headlines
- Bad: "New Survey Reveals Surprising Insights About Remote Work"
- Good: "Survey: 61% of Remote Managers Have Never Been Trained to Manage Remotely"
- Bad: "Hearthside Releases Annual State of the Industry Report"
- Good: "Restaurant No-Shows Cost Independent Operators $7,200 a Month, Hearthside Data Shows"
The pattern: the single most surprising finding, stated as the headline. Data stories are the easiest earned coverage available to small companies, but only if the headline does the journalist's math for them.
The subheadline: your second swing
The optional subheadline (one italic line under the headline) is where the second-best fact goes: the investor list, the availability date, the customer count. Don't waste it restating the headline. Full placement details are in our format guide.
A 30-second checklist before you send
- Is there a present-tense news verb?
- Is it under 80 characters?
- Is there a number or a recognizable name?
- Did you delete every superlative?
- Would the headline still be interesting with your company name swapped out for a competitor's? (If it's only interesting to you, it isn't news yet.)
Write five candidate headlines, apply the checklist, keep the winner. The spread between your best and worst candidate is usually the spread between coverage and silence.
RepuPR's builder drafts headline options from your facts and formats the rest to match. [See how it works](/how-it-works).