Trying to grab a customer’s attention these days is  like standing up in a roaring crowd

Here are five easy pieces for writing compelling copy that cuts through the noise of the crowd:

1.         Make Your Copy Easy To Notice – Your first step is to create a short, punchy headline to make people stop and focus on you. This is the equivalent of yelling, “Fire!” when standing in a crowd. It’s a compelling announcement that directly affects the audience. For you to affect your intended audience, your headline needs to promise a solution to a problem, arouse curiosity, warn of a danger, deliver a piece of unexpected news or bust through a common belief and stir up controversy.

Consider the headline, “Sugar found to aid in healthful weight loss.” Many people viewing this would stop what they’re doing and read on. It’s controversial news that arouses curiosity. Now lace your statement with relevant keywords and you’ll create a headline that will get the attention of your audience and search engines.

2.         Make It Easy To Connect With You – Write your copy as if you’re having a conversation with one person in your audience. Relate to them. Use the sacred words “you” and “yours”. People will stay focused on your message if they think you’re talking directly to them – and you understand their needs and problems.

It’s similar to chatting with guests at a party; they’re more likely to stick around if you’re friendly, conversational, and keep the topic centered around their interests. But, start talking about a new office procedure you’re implementing, or the history of your company, and they’ll likely wander off in search of a more relatable topic.

3.         Make It Easy To Remember – Because we take in so much information daily, much of it dissipates within moments of receiving it. But what sticks in our minds are stories, analogies and mental pictures. For example, if I told you the Eiffel tower is 1063 feet high, you might not remember that fact. But, if I told you the Eiffel tower is the length of three football fields laid end to end, you’ll probably remember that next week, and possibly ten years from now.

So layer your words with stories and images, including stories about how customers achieved success by using your product or service. This is what makes infomercials so diabolically influential – they weave stories, images and analogies together into a memorable message.

4.         Make It Easy To Read – What grabs our attention is the rare message that our eyes can’t help but absorb. This means creating short, artistic blocks of copy that almost read like poetry. The eyes can’t help but digest them. As a scriptwriter, I learned to format my scripts so narrators could read them easily and quickly in a sound booth. The simpler the lines were, the easier it was for narrators to focus on the words and avoid making mistakes.

And it works just the same with your audience. The easier your messages are to read, the stronger their focus. It’s also a good idea to read your copy out loud and listen to the structure and balance of your sentences. Do your words flow smoothly or do they sound clunky and cumbersome when you hear them out loud? The more visually and auditorily streamlined your messages are, the longer your audience will keep reading them.

5.         Make It Easy To Take The Next Step – Your message should entice readers into taking a simple, follow-up step that will benefit them. This is your “call to action.” Recently, a yoga instructor asked me to review the ad copy she had been running in her local weekly newspaper, but not getting any response. She asked me whether, if I was a reader, I would visit her website after seeing her ad. I had to say “No.” The ad contained beautiful imagery, a list of yoga courses and the instructor’s contact information, but there was nothing to lure me in further.

So we added this simple statement: “Two free classes for signing up online by the end of next month.” These few words made all the difference between people taking the next step and signing up for their free classes, or turning the page of the magazine.

If you follow these five easy pieces of copywriting, you will find that your audience is much more likely to stop, look and remember you, and then take the most important next step – get in touch with you so you can start building a relationship.

**Note: Our guest blogger Joan Gale Frank, is a marketing and content writer, living in Portland, Oregon. She is also the author of Instant Guts!, Home Seller’s Blues and How To Beat Them, and the House Selling Blues Blog. She can be reached at joanf@vom.com

For our last contest, the situation/question was: “You own a bakery and have just created a fabulous new dessert that you want to promote through your online newsletter, Facebook ads and some local food magazines. You want your ad to be mouthwatering with a funny, catchy slogan for your irresistible dark chocolate gooey cake-like creation. What would that slogan be?”

Barry came up with: “We call it “Goo Goo Ga Ga,” but it ain’t for babies.” Congratulations Barry! Please feel free to share your ad.

Our next contest question is up on our Facebook page, left side of the screen.

Our December Happy Holidays Newsletter is available to read here. We’ve been quite busy with a huge catalog project over the last couple of months. Read about it in our newsletter.

We’ve been doing copy writing for over 25 years. We’ve written,  revised, edited and ghost-written hundreds of  articles, essays, business descriptions, blog posts, press releases and even books.

What we’ve found as a common problem, especially with companies trying to describe what they do, is exemplified below. We thought you’d get a chuckle or two out of it!

Read the following copy about a fictional company, EquivoCorp International:

“Strength and leadership. Unprecedented connectivity. That’s EquivoCorp International.

“We provide critical thinking, strategic focus, and technical planning for your complex, multifaceted needs. Our unique expertise, combined with our inclusive, participatory approach to projects, creates clear, workable solutions that unite visions and goals with technical requirements. Our collaborative and participatory approach serves as a catalyst for change.

“EquivoCorp business segments are interrelated from the viewpoint of key ingredients such as skill sets, customers, technologies and marketplaces. These segments add synergistic value to one another and, in turn, to our customers. Put simply, EquivoCorp’s unique combination of attributes promotes success, empowering us to integrate our services while leveraging our expertise.

“One of our core values is always maintaining a client focus. We recognize the unique needs of different client groups and we always factor in a holistic view of the client’s needs. We deliver results that map directly to your business challenges. Our clients enjoy a wealth of specialized expertise, consistent service, program scalability and seamless execution.

“Our passion for innovation never stops. At EquivoCorp, we’re continually enhancing our own products and services to better serve our clients. This means expanding and refining strategic capabilities, areas of expertise, proven methodologies and the innovative tools we offer.”

It sounds great. Beautiful prose. Lots of buzzwords. But at the end of five paragraphs of copy, you have no idea what this company actually does, if anything.

Unfortunately, too much business copy writing is like this. Lots of buzzwords and flowery phrases, but no real substance. Our friends over at HubSpot call it “Gobblydegook”.

Here are some key questions to ask and answer before you embark on a description of your business. These are the sort of questions that we ask our clients before beginning to write a brochure or  website pages:

• What business would you say you are in? Describe as fully as possible.

• How would you describe the products or services you provide – that is, an overall description that covers ALL of your products.

• What are your main product or service sub-categories?

• What is your company’s Mission Statement? What is your company trying to achieve?

• What specific industries/sectors do you serve? How would you describe each one?

• How do your products benefit your customers?

• What attributes do your customers most appreciate about your products (strength, precision, reliability, quality, etc.)?

• How are your products better than your competitors’?

• What does your company take the most pride in?

These and other basic questions will help you to narrow down exactly what your company does and what specific products and services you provide. And, considering that your potential customers will be searching for you using very specific terms,  it is important to use those terms so they can easily find you. These are called “keywords” and is an entire subject in itself.

Have you ever run across business descriptions that made no sense or left you still wondering what the company really produced? Or have you ever landed on a website only to find you couldn’t figure out what it was the company actually does or offers?

There is nothing that screams “amateur” louder than the clumsy use of color on a website. We’ve all seen the worst examples – sites that assault your senses with six different neon hues – but even some web developers who should know better sometimes present color combinations that make us cringe – and make visitors leave rapidly.

There’s a lot to know about color theory, color harmony, and how to use color effectively, and any designer worth his or her salt has spent years perfecting this art – but even for the beginner, there are some easy ways to avoid the worst color gaffes.

1. Less is more

Just because you have hundreds of colors at your command doesn’t mean you should use them all. Remember, color is one of the tools you can use to create interest in your website content. Don’t make the color so overwhelming that your message gets lost. That neon yellow background may look “happy” to you, but you want people’s attention to go on your content, not on the background. Limit the number of colors you use, and if you use a strong color, use it to direct viewers to key content.

2. Clashing vs. smashing!

Two or more strong, bright colors placed next to each other can often clash horribly. When colors clash, it causes discomfort for the viewer, and they may well leave your site just because of that discomfort. Some neophytes to the use of color only think of color in terms of its full-strength hue.  “Let’s make the background RED!” “Let’s make the lettering YELLOW!”

There are three dimensions to color: hue, saturation and value.  Hue is which color (red, green, blue, etc.).  Saturation is how much color (a blue-grey is a de-saturated blue).  Value is light or dark (red, for instance, can vary from a light pink tint to a deep burgundy).

By playing with the saturation and value of colors, two clashing hues can be made to live together comfortably.

3. Harmony

There has been a lot of research and study on the subject of color harmony – which colors look good with each other, and how to create effective color palates. A thorough study of the subject is essential for anyone who wants to become professional in the subject. There are many online references to start with, such as this summary.

There are a couple of ways to get your feet wet with color harmony. One is called monochromatic harmony, where one simply takes one color, say a blue, and varies the saturation and value to make several different versions of that color – see the Loewy Design website above.

Another is analogous harmony, where one uses colors that are next to each other on a color wheel – for instance all cool colors, such as greens and blues, or all warm colors, such as yellows and oranges. See the Ecoki site, above.

As you get more ambitious, you can try other combinations, such as complimentary or triadic – but remember to vary the saturation and value so the colors sit well together and don’t clash. Bold spots of a complimentary hue can often be used effectively to highlight key content or navigation.

ColorSchemeDesigner allows you to play around with different types of color harmony.

4. Know your audience

It helps to know who you are trying to appeal to. Young people, for instance, have a greater toleration of bright colors and bold color combinations. So you might expect a website catering to teenage girls to have a lot of bright pinks, vibrant reds or bold yellows – like the GossipTeen site above. On the other hand, a business site would tend to be more subtle in its color use, such as blues and greys, like IMB’s website, above.

A rock band might prefer a site that has a dark and grungy look, perhaps with bold reds. A holistic clinic, on the other hand, might prefer a clean, white, minimalist look, with tints of cool greens or blues.

A male-oriented sports site might use bold, bright colors, where a female oriented fashion site might use subtle tints.

Look at other sites that appeal to the same audience – what colors are they using?

5. Know your message

Different colors have different meanings, as this SmashingMagazine article details.

This can be highly subjective, and varies from culture to culture, but you should be aware that the wrong color can send the wrong message, while the right color can support your message.

Red, for instance, is associated with fire, violence, love, passion. If you’re promoting a destination health spa, where people go for healing and relaxation, red would not be your best choice – you might go with calming blues and earth tones, such as those used on the Canyon Ranch website, above. But if you’re creating a website for a hot new night club, deep reds and golds might be the perfect choice, as on the website for Atlanta’s Opera night club, above.

Value and saturation can also change the meaning of a color. A light, vibrant blue can be hopeful and refreshing.  A dark blue can connote sadness. A subtle blue-grey can give a feeling of stability and permanence.

Know what your message is and what kind of an emotion or feeling you are trying to communicate, then use the colors that will forward that message.

6. Branding

Color is an important part of your branding. The color (or colors) of your logo should be the key color of your website. A consistent color scheme that integrates with your branding will give customers confidence. They know they’ve come to the right place.

Contrast the H & R Block site, above, with the UPS site. H & R Block has a light green logo. Their site uses a bright green as its key color. You know, at a glance, that you’re on their site.  UPS, on the other hand, has a well-known brown logo. It’s also the color of their highly visible trucks. But when you visit their website, it’s teal blue. The first impression you get is that you’re on the wrong site!

7. Get inspired

Inspiration for great color combinations can come from many sources – other websites, magazine advertising, billboards. Start noticing pleasing color combinations in the world around you, whether it’s a painting you like, a brightly colored house in your neighborhood, a beautiful sunset, an attractive outfit you see on the street. Make a mental note of the colors. See if you can spot the hue, saturation and value of each color, and how they work together.

There are many online resources to inspire you and help you find and develop effective color combinations. One of my favorites is Adobe Kuler.

What are your experiences with color? Have you noticed any websites with particularly bad use of color? Any with excellent use of color?

The subject of price estimates can be a frustrating one for both clients and graphic designers. Here are a few tips on how to get an estimate that is accurate and fair:

1. Be specific:

Asking “How much for a website?” is like walking into a restaurant and asking “How much do you charge for a meal?” The only possible answer is “it depends.” Filet mignon or grilled cheese? How many appetizers, sides, drinks or desserts? Quoting graphic arts work is the same – it all depends on what you want.

Let’s say you are opening a clothing boutique and want a website. Well, before a website design firm would know how much to charge you, they would have to know what you want exactly. How many pages will the website be? How many different clothing designers will you be featuring? Do you want a page for each designer? How many designs you want to present – is it 30 or 300? Do you want to include your policies for returns and exchanges? Do you have other products you’d like to feature like purses and shoes? And do you want an e-commerce shopping cart and checkout system?

The same for any copy writing project. For a client to ask “How much do you charge to write a brochure?” is like asking a contractor, “How much do you charge for building a house?” One would need a lot more information to even begin answering that question. In the case of copywriting, any writer will want to know how many pages the brochure will be, how much copy on each page, and if the copywriter will be provided with all factual information or will have to do his or her own research or interviews.

The more specific you are about what you want, whether it’s a website, a brochure or a catalog, the more accurate the estimate will be.

2. Work it out:

Maybe you don’t have all the answers when you contact the graphic design firm. Be willing to sit down and work out the details of the work you require. A good graphic design firm can help you work out the details and make recommendations.

A good design firm understands that it’s always a balance between what you want and what you can afford. And they can help you work out a solution that achieves your goals within your budget. That requires an exchange of information. Any designer who simply sends you a “quote” without asking a lot of questions, can be counted on to do a shabby, inaccurate, makeshift job with little actual thought put into it. OR will give you one quote, then present you with a significantly higher final bill.

Our programmer once quoted a potential client for a fairly large website project. He presented the quote but the client ended up going with another designer. When our programmer checked back with this client after their website was done, the client said that, instead of coming in at the quoted price, the company that did the website work, ended up being more than $5500.00 over the original quote…and over $7500.00 more than our programmer estimated (and would have easily completed the work for).

3. Be realistic:

 Let’s say you have a budget of $500 and want a 10 page website with full e-commerce capability. Well, before you spend days working with a design firm, educating them on the extent of the website and all of the bells and whistles that you need, why not give them an idea of your budget up front?  Knowing your budget range at the start, especially if you have very limited funds, an experienced designer can work with you to come up with a solution that fits your budget. Maybe what you have envisioned is not possible with the budget you have – but maybe there is a great solution you can afford.

We recently had an inquiry from a photographer who wanted to offer his work on his own image searching website, patterned on iStockPhoto or Fotosearch. He wanted people to be able to enter a search term and pull up the relevant images from his portfolio. Of course, we had to ask a lot of questions to be able to accurately give him an estimate. How many images? Did he want ecommerce functionality, like a shopping cart and checkout?  Did he want people to be able to save images to a lightbox? But he was impatient with all of our questions. “Just tell me what your lowest starting price is for a website,” he asked. So we told him. And even that was way beyond his budget – he had just a few hundred dollars to spend.

4. Come prepared:

These are just a few of the many things a professional designer will need to know to accurately assess the scope of your project. For a website, for example, he or she would need to know 1)  the amount of time your project will take, 2) the functions needed on the website, 3) how many pages, 4) how many different page templates to build, 5) how much custom programming, and 6) how complex any programming issues are.

You may not have all the answers to these questions – that’s fine. No professional designer will expect you to know the details of web design or graphic design. But come prepared with what you do know – your business, your product, your goals, your budget. Have an outline of what you want. Bring some examples of brochures, ads or websites from other firms that you like or want to emulate. Have a good idea of your objectives – what you want the website or promotion to achieve. Know your customers or potential customers and their needs.

So if you are looking to hire anyone to do graphic arts work, you should come to the table with as much information as possible. Answer the designer’s questions as completely as you can. Understand that the designer needs your input. It’s your business, and the better that designer understands your business, your goals and your needs, the better he or she can accurately estimate your job.

What experiences have you had giving or getting accurate quotes, either as a professional designer or as a client? We’d like to hear from you.

On his letterhead, business cards, signage, and even on his trucks, there was the name of his company, “Smith Tool & Die,” set in Times New Roman, all caps. Nothing else, just his company name, black lettering on white, set in a ubiquitous type style. When we approached him about designing a logo for his company, he said that he “didn’t want to change the logo he had been using for years.”

But did he actually have a logo?

Some might say he did, using the simplest definition of a logo – “a symbol or other design adopted by an organization to identify its products.” His plain lettering identified his business, but it did little more than that. And a real logo should do much, much more.

What a  good logo should do:

1.  A logo should be unique.

2.  It should stand out from the competition.

3.  It should be simple and memorable.

4.  It should communicate something positive about your company.

If we look at Smith’s “logo,” we see that it really does none of those things.

Can you use your company’s name or initials as a logo?

Sure, just look at Coca Cola, Google, IBM, J. C. Penney and hundreds more. But the successful ones do something special, something distinctive with their lettering – it’s not just a standard, “out of the box” typeface.  They’ve done something with the type to give it a unique look and feel and to make a statement about the company.

If you want to use your company’s name or initials as your logo, go for it. But have it done by a good designer who knows the basics of design and typography. And make sure the final logo does all of the things listed above.  Remember, different type faces communicate different things – elegance, strength, fashion, nostalgia, stability. And a good designer can create a type treatment that is unique to your company.

How about using a picture of your dog?

Clients sometimes have a favorite photograph they would like to “use as their logo” – a pet, a tool or object related to their business, a shot of their premises, or just an image they found on the internet.  Well, a photograph could be used as a starting point in working out a logo, but a photograph is not a logo. Why? Look at the photograph under magnification. See those little dots of color that make up the image? When you make the image large (like on the side of a truck or a building sign) it will look blurry.  When you make the image very small, as on a business card, it can look muddy and unclear.  A good logo designer knows how important it is to make a logo simple and easily readable at any size, from very tiny to very large. That’s why the final art for a logo is always done in a vector program, such as Adobe Illustrator, which retains its sharp quality no matter how big or small it is.

Let’s say our Mr. Smith has a pet bulldog, and he thinks that would be a perfect image for his “tough” tools. Well, OK. But he’d better have a designer work it into a logo that is simple, distinct and unique − and does not look like the hundreds of other bulldog logos that are out there.

About logo mills and clip art

You’ve seen the ads: “We’ll design your logo for $50” or $10. Or $4.95. Sounds like a real bargain, until you see the finished product.

These logo mills can be counted on to do one of two things:

1. They will generate a bunch of meaningless shapes that may be “pretty” but are never unique or distinctive, and say nothing significant about your company.  Or

2. They will fall back on the most over-used and clichéd images for your type of business.

Neither one of these approaches will accomplish the purpose of a logo. If you use an abstract shape, make it mean something. Nike’s famous “swoosh,” for instance, is about speed and agility. Target’s “target” is about meeting customer expectations.  Shapes have meanings and communicate certain things – a circle can communicate wholeness, unity, infinity. A square can communicate stability or honesty. A triangle can suggest action, movement or growth. There are an infinite number of abstract shapes, each of which can be used to communicate something significant about your company.

As for imagery or symbols, choose something that makes a unique statement about your company. If you research what other companies in your field are using for their logos, you’ll soon see which images are over-used and clichéd. You would be surprised, for instance, to see how many home inspection businesses have, as their logo, a picture of a house inside a magnifying glass. Avoid these easy but over-used solutions in your logo.

Try not to use the images and symbols that everyone else is using. How many logos have you seen, for instance, that use an abstract jumping human figure? A silhouette of a tree? A stylized sun?

The work you put into creating a good logo is well worth it. A good logo designer will find out all about your company, your products, your goals, your competition. And he or she will design something that is uniquely yours, and that makes a positive and strong impression.

So the question is, do you have a logo?

P.S. (for a good laugh, check out this article which gives some made-up examples of bad font choices in logo design)

Many great manufacturing companies, it seems, can build anything – except an effective website.

1. Appearances matter: Brilliant, award-winning design is not the most important thing in a website, but if you fall below a certain standard of design quality, your potential customers won’t take you seriously. If your website looks like it was put together by someone’s nephew in his basement, people will assume you’re a small, unprofessional, fly-by-night operation – no matter how big and successful you really are.

We had one client who was a very successful international manufacturer, with plants on several continents, worldwide distribution, and a stellar, cutting-edge product. Yet their website made them look like they were a couple of guys working out of a garage. A well-designed website instantly communicates that you are big, stable and successful, and that you care about quality.

And even if you are two guys working out of a garage, you can look as big, stable and professional as any competitor. Good design doesn’t cost a lot – it just requires dealing with a designer who knows what they are doing.

2. Content, content, content: Give your potential customers the information they want and need. That requires knowing your customer. Talk to them. Talk to your sales people. Find out what are the essential things your customers need to know. Understand how purchasing decisions are made.

Your home page should establish, right away, who you are, what business you are in, what products or services you provide, and what sets you apart from your competitors. Anyone should be able to glance at your home page and understand all of these things right away. There should be no question as to what you do and the benefit you provide.

And keep the text customer oriented. Talk about their problems, their needs, their concerns, and how you solve them. Forget that company mission statement or the glowing letter from the president. They don’t care. They want to know what can you do for me?

Have reasons for customers to return to your site. Offer such things as product information, specifications and operating manuals. Keep this content ungated (doesn’t require registration). Convert your PDF files to web pages and make the PDF available as a free download at the bottom of the web page.

Photographs and videos are a great way to show your products and demonstrate them in action.

3. Navigation: Face it, your business is complex. You may have an extensive product line, many options, many different types of customers or industries that you serve. Effectively directing the customer and channeling them to the products and services they need is vital. Before you start or re-do your website, work out your navigation in advance. Customers should be able to glance at your home page and see exactly where they need to go.

Consider offering a download of your complete catalog, and making the download button visible on your home page – “above the fold.” Even better, consider making your catalog available as part of the website itself, so customers can search it online.

4. Make sure people can find you: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a big subject. Ideally, you should have an SEO specialist work over your site and make sure that search engines can find it. But even if you can’t afford that right now, there are some simple things you can do to make your site visible.

One of the most common mistakes is to embed key text and information in graphics or Flash animation. Search engines cannot read text that is embedded into pictures. You can test this by attempting to select and copy the text on a website. If you can’t select and copy the text, then search engines can’t read it.

Include in your informational text key words that people normally use when searching for your type of product or service. Use the most obvious ones, and any common variations.

Take the time to learn and use title, description and keyword metatags. Or hire someone to handle these SEO basics for you.

5. Keep it timely: There is nothing worse than an out-of-date website to communicate to your customers that you don’t care. Outdated offers, announcements for last year’s trade shows, out-of-date staff lists – it all detracts from your image as an efficient company that will provide great service. Make sure your website has a user-friendly content management system so you can update frequently and easily.

6. Capture and care for customer leads: Not everyone who visits your website is ready to buy. Provide reasons for them to contact you and give you their name and e-mail. Include contact forms and “get a free estimate” forms. Offer a newsletter with industry information, product announcements and tips.

Include “calls to action” such as “Call now to order,” “Click here for a free quote,” and “Download our product catalog.” A “live chat” or “live assistance” function can be a great lead generator.

7. Use Social Media: Facebook and Twitter are not just for teenage girls any more. In fact, more and more businesses are using these to build an interested online community. Consider starting a blog where you post relevant articles about your industry, your products, new developments, and upcoming events. Providing a forum where your customers can interact with you and other customers and share knowledge helps to build your company’s brand and your positioning as an industry leader.

Post press releases on your website and/or blog, then link to them on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Make sure your website includes “share” buttons so that visitors can easily share your content.

There are many other things you can do to make your manufacturing website more effective, and truly reflect the quality and professionalism of your products and services. Make it bright, attractive, informative and easy to navigate, and easy to find. Click here to view examples

What difficulties have you experienced when visiting various websites? Or, if you’re in the manufacturing fields, what challenges have you encountered creating your website?

Cheers,

Jefferson

Something that’s been bothering me for some time now

DPR Insurance – Your Trusted Name in Insurance. Can you get any more time-worn or clichéd? Certainly this company is not my “trusted” name, nor anyone else’s. And I won’t go into the use of initials as a business name again! (more cringe, cringe). It’s covered in another article here.

Or what about this one: Jake’s Auto Repair – Your Choice for Automotive Care. Yawn. Not my choice!

Some of the difficulty people have with taglines comes from a confusion between slogans and taglines. A slogan is a simple, dynamic phrase that evokes an emotion or establishes the character of a brand. Nike’s “Just Do It,” for instance, doesn’t say anything about athletic shoes. But it does create a feeling about the company. Taglines, on the other hand, are descriptive phrases that tell what the company or organization does. A tagline has to actually help others understand your business better and have some kind of meaning or it’s useless at best, pompous at worst.

In terms of your web presence, having an effective tagline is far more important, in my view, than having a catchy slogan. When someone lands on your website, you absolutely want to make sure they immediately understand what it is your company actually does, what it sells, what it makes. If you can accomplish that with a bit of pizzazz, all the better!

The process of coming up with a tagline can be as easy as this:

DPR Insurance – Assuring You are Covered When You Most Need It

OR,  simply

DPR Insurance – Life, Auto, Home – We’ve Got You Covered

There are so many examples of bad taglines and good taglines, what works and what is simply mundane, boring or ridiculous. Tons of articles exist about the dos and don’ts in the creating of taglines. In fact,  I found this excellent article which pretty much sums it up. Therefore, I’ll let Thomas Young, MBA, CEO of Intuitive Websites  take over from here;.

Website Taglines

By: Thomas Young, MBA

Writing a catchy tagline may be the most important part of your home page content.  The tagline is the sales hook, the most compelling message on your home page and often the starting point in your Website’s conversion strategy.

What is a Tagline?

Taglines are 8-12 word phrases that explain the key benefits of your company.  They can be set up as part of your logo, in photo captions, questions, bullet items or other small blocks of text on the site.  Taglines are critical because people scan Websites, especially first time visitors who are just beginning to understand your company.

Taglines are not slogans or catchy phrases that support the brand like Nike’s “Just Do It” or Chevy’s “An American Revolution.”  These slogans only work when connected to the brand and do not work on their own.  However, most small and medium sized firms don’t have a national brand that is a household name, so their tagline should clarify what the company is about.

Tagline Mistakes

By far the biggest tagline mistake companies make is using a tagline that is generic, cryptic, or not understood by the Website visitor.  Most Web users simply overlook meaningless taglines and give them little or no value.  Marketers regularly confuse taglines with slogans.  Another common mistake is to use internal “company-speak” that is not understood by the Website visitors.  Many Websites do not have a tagline and use a block of text on their home page that is not easily scanned. Others put their taglines into flash or moving text images so that it disappears and makes the user work to read it.  Some cluttered sites may have four or five taglines pulling the visitor in several directions.

Examples of Bad Taglines

Here are a few examples of actual taglines and slogans from the Internet from medium sized businesses.  Visit these Websites and see the comments below to better understand how taglines should be written.

• It’s about time.  What will you do with yours? (trustamerica.com)
• Colorado’s premier destination resort (decasno.com)
• Leading IT service and support (thinkhdi.com)
• Solutions…(geba.com)
• Where sales people click and connect instantly (salesspider.com)
• In Control, In Command (pcstelcom.com)
• Welcome (aqua-hot.com)

I could go on and on.  Let’s take a look at these taglines and slogans and see if we can get them to make sense.

Trust Company of America (TCA) – TrustAmerica.com

Tagline: It’s about time.  What will you do with yours?

Many financial services Websites use generic taglines that don’t usually connect with the visitor or their target market.  This company provides service to financial planners that will save them time.  A stronger tagline would read:

* “We provide the back-end support so you save time.”

Questions can also work with taglines:

* “Are you wasting time with administrative work?”

These taglines do a much better job of getting at the heart of the issue for financial planner’s that will hire TCA.

Double Eagle Casino – Decasino.com

Tagline: Colorado’s premier destination resort

The first major problem here is the Double Eagle is not a resort, but a casino.  This is a much better descriptive tagline:

* “Cripple Creek Colorado’s premier destination casino.”

They can also include a differentiator in the tagline like this:

* “Cripple Creek Colorado’s premier destination casino, book online.”
* “Cripple Creek Colorado’s premier destination casino offering hot slots and more.”
* “Cripple Creek Colorado’s premier destination casino with the original Roll the Dice.”

HDI – ThinkHDI.com

Tagline: Leading IT service and support

Their tagline is generic and thousands of companies could use it.  The tagline does not say what they do.

* “Training IT professionals to become excellent at service and support.”

Does that clear things up?  Of course we are assuming the user knows what IT means.

GEBA – Geba.com

Tagline: Solutions…

The word “solutions” is probably the most common used word in taglines on the Web.  In this case it is the only word in the tagline.  In fact, none of the static content on the home page describes what GEBA actually does.  A strong tagline will do just that like this tagline:

* “Helping organizations make the right decisions about health insurance and financial security.”

Sales Spider – SalesSpider.com

Taglines:

• Where sales people click and connect instantly
• Other social networks make you friends. Sales Spider makes you money.
• Join now for free.
• Build an instant network of contacts.

To name a few…

I recently received a sales call from this organization and for the life of me could not figure out what they do and how they could help me.  Their Website made me more confused and their multiple taglines did not help. How does the site make money?

Their tagline seems to be:

* “When we figure out how you make money, we’ll let you know.”

Actually, the very small tagline in fine print below their logo is the most informative tagline.  The question is, how does it make you money?  Maybe this sums it up.

* “Meet people online that you can sell.”

The Website has many taglines and most of them come and go in a flash ad on the home page.

PCS – Pcstelcom.com

Tagline: “In Command. In Control”

This company does not need a slogan because they are not a national brand.  What does that tagline mean?   PCS provides telephone systems for prisons and are marketing to large prison systems who will purchase and install their phone systems.  How about this tagline:

* “A leader in customized, comprehensive telecommunication products and services for prisons.”

That means more to the user than “In Control. In Command.”

Aqua-Hot Heating Systems – Aqua-Hot.com

Tagline: Welcome

Another very popular tagline is the word “welcome.”  This is a left over from the early days of the Web.  This Website uses a block of text on their home page that really needs a tagline. Pretty much everything that is said in that block of text can be summed up in this tagline:

* “Never run out of hot water in your RV.”

Where to Find Great Taglines

A couple areas to see good uses of taglines are newspapers and magazine article headers and photo captions.  They have learned the importance of capturing the scanning reader and driving them into content.  Also, great marketing companies like Starbucks and Apple make great use of taglines on the Web.

Take a look at your taglines from the perspective of your Website visitors and ask if they make sense and help clarify your company’s message and move your Website visitors deeper in to the site?

Can you think of other examples of good or bad taglines you’ve come across?

Here’s another gem from HubSpot writer Sarah Goliger :

“3 Signs It’s Time to Pull the Plug on Your Marketing Campaign

Ever heard the expression “don’t throw good money after bad”? Ever started something — maybe a report or a blog post — that began getting worse and worse, but you kept writing it anyway? Ever worked on a project that was clearly not going to solve your problem, but you just continued working on it?

These are examples of what is referred to in psychology as “escalation of commitment.” It is a force that drives many irrational decisions, such as, in these cases, wasting more time writing your post when the choice of topic was terrible, or continuing a project that won’t have any value down the line. But we’ve started these things, and we’ve somehow made a commitment to them. And even though it makes more sense to quit while we’re ahead, we often don’t do that.

When it comes to the world of marketing, escalation of commitment can be extremely dangerous.

The Story of a Money-Sucking Sweepstakes

On June 1^st, HubSpot launched a Marketing Library Sweepstakes on Facebook in an effort to drive prospect generation by collecting email addresses of contest entrants as well as to spread reach by increasing HubSpot’s number of Facebook likes. The goal was to double our number of Facebook likes from 25,000 to 50,000, thereby retrieving about 25,000 email addresses.

Our original idea for the contest prize was an offer of “HubSpot software for life,” but we weren’t how we could manage such a grand offer. After contemplating other ideas, we decided the prize would be a collection of about 15 of the best marketing books, including some by David Meerman Scott, Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ash, and more famous authors. At the suggestion of the third-party company with whom we worked to administer the contest, we also included an iPad2 to make the prize bigger and more attractive. The sweepstakes was scheduled to run for the two months of June and July.

About two weeks into the contest, we started to get concerned. Our numbers were looking atrociously low, and while we were able to triple the average number of Facebook likes we were generating per day, we weren’t getting enough new email addresses. So we sat down and looked at the numbers. Many charts, graphs, and calculations later, we had both visual and numerical evidence that we were not going to meet our initial goals or break even on cost of running our campaign. Our contest administrator informed us that the average visit-to-entry conversion rate for this type of contest was between 20-40%, and ours was coming in around the low-end at about 20%. We were paying about 4 times what we typically equate one email address costs. In short, we weren’t getting nearly enough value for the cost, and it didn’t look like we were going to, based on our projected growth trends.

So, we pulled the plug. The cost was sunk, we were devoting too much time to this project, and it wasn’t delivering. We decided to cut our losses to the greatest extent possible by ending the contest immediately.

What Went Wrong?

Our speculation is that, given the prize, our goal of 25,000 new prospects and our two-month timeframe were both unreasonable. The prize simply was neither attractive enough to reel in such a high number of entries, nor exciting enough to generate buzz for a full two months.

So why didn’t we give away something bigger? Maybe a nice sports car or a Caribbean vacation? We’re sure these prizes would’ve driven many more entries to our contest, but we chose to offer a prize that would yield higher-quality prospects. In other words, the people who are interested in winning top marketing books are more likely to be interested in HubSpot than are all those people interested in winning a flashy car or vacation. In a nutshell, we traded in quantity for quality.

Essentially, we overestimated the number of prospects we could generate by offering the prize we had chosen, so we were willing to spend more money on the project.  When we realized that we were not going to generate enough new email addresses to break even on our costs, we pulled out and ended the sweepstakes.

How to Know When to Pull the Plug on a Campaign

These are the 3 questions you need to constantly be asking when you’re running a marketing campaign.

1. Are you getting enough value out of the money you’re spending? Are you going to break even on it?

Our answer: No. We were spending nearly four times as much as we wanted to be spending on each prospect. The cost far exceeded the value.

2. Is the projected trend going to increase your yield enough to warrant continuation of the project?

Our answer: No. The projected trend was an increasing number of Facebook likes and contest entries, but the rate at which these were projected to increase was far too low to break even.

3. Would you be saving more time and money if you wait until later to pull the plug than you would if you do it now?

Our answer: No. We’d be saving the most time and money if we end it now rather than later.

If you answer “no” to any of these questions in your own evaluation, you should stop and take the time to run an analysis of where you stand with your campaign. Don’t escalate your commitment to an underperforming project when the value isn’t exceeding the cost. Pull the plug, and put your resources to better use. Then explain to your fans why you had to end it early and apologize for being unable to extend your campaign further.

Have you ever needed to make the tough call to pull the plug on a campaign you ran?

You never get a second chance to make that first impression. So why not make it an impressive one? People don’t always see your products and services as the fabulous things you know they are. What they do see though, is your home page. So should you give that home page a once-over – or a complete makeover?

Why are some websites successful at creating good qualified leads, selling their products and services, getting customers in the door and keeping customers coming back, while others are simply glanced at and abandoned? Or  are so difficult to navigate that potential customers exit in frustration.

For example, why are Restaurant and Bar websites often particularly frustrating to users?

This is a subject dear to my heart. Being a Portland foodie, I eat out often, have a discerning palate, and like to share the experience.

But here’s what happened recently when perusing the web with a friend to locate a restaurant in the Pearl District. We wanted to find one that we hadn’t tried before. We started out by category, the first choices being Italian or Mex. We were appalled by how many restaurant sites had tacky looking graphics, unappetizing photos, and were hard to navigate. Many were slow to load, had outdated menus, outdated specials, or incorrect hours of operation. Some had whole sections of their website that were empty – no content. Others had typos, misuse of  a.m./p.m.(such as: “Open for dinner 5pm till 12pm”), hard-to-find addresses, and even wrong phone numbers. Yet these restaurants are all located in Portland’s premier tourist attraction and dining location…the Pearl! My friend and I would simply move on to another site when we encountered too much of a problem getting information from one site. And it’s the same with any business. If people have difficulty finding something on your site, or if it looks unappealing or amateur – they will simply move on.

People assume that if a business does not place importance on keeping their public image current and fresh, that they probably have the same lackadaisical attitude towards customer service. A sloppily maintained, non-user-friendly website is seen as an indicator of the kind of service one can expect from that business.

A key point is being aware of how customers find your business. To return to the example of restaurants, many people these days use their smartphones to locate nearby restaurants and bars. Based on their GPS location, they can easily pull up the websites of nearby restaurants to check out their hours of operation, menus, prices, and happy hours. They want a phone number they can call, an address they can find, and even menus they can copy and text to friends. But many restaurant website designers seem unaware of these things. They embed addresses and phone numbers in fancy flash animation graphics, making them impossible to cut and paste. They make sites that are slow to load on mobile devices. They insert menus in pdf form, or set them in hard-to-read fonts. All of that means lost business.

What information do your customers want? I don’t know about you, but for me, when I’m looking for someplace to eat, I’m interested in specific things: 1) What kind of food is served? 2) What is the atmosphere like: intimate, formal, casual (photos are better than words)? 3) Is there a happy hour and what’s the menu? 4) What’s the regular menu with prices? 5) Is there a full bar, beer and wine, no alcohol? 6) Where is it located, what are the hours and is there parking? I like to see some of the food offered and what the restaurant looks like inside. I like to study the menu and get a feel for the type of experience I can expect. I could care less if the web design is state-of-the-art award winning with animated graphics or not. I just want a clean, professional, up to date, easy-to-navigate, easy-to-share site. And it’s true for any business. People are looking for specific information and facts. Of course, aesthetics are important and even essential to getting your message across. But not at the expense of presenting concise information and simple, clean, easy navigation.

There are many very simple solutions to all of these problems from a web design standpoint. There are many simple solutions from a business owner standpoint. Presenting your best public face doesn’t have to cost much.

So does your website need a once-over, or a complete makeover?

Call us for a review of your home page. We’ll pick up the tab.

P.S. To see some of our website makeovers, click here . And if you’re a restaurateur check out our restaurant page here. Manufacturers/Engineers/Techies – Click here.

What have some of your issues/experiences been trying to view, share or purchase from websites? We’d enjoy hearing your stories or simply getting your input.