Do you have a tagline or a slogan?

What’s the difference you ask? Here’s my non-marketing-speak definition:

Slogans are rather generic and can apply to different industries. And taglines show a unique and specific benefit of the product and can’t apply easily to other products or industries.

A slogan example is Nike’s “Just do it.”

It’s a slogan because it’s rather flexible and generic. Imagine:
•    5-Minute Loans: Just do it.
•    Friendly Family Counseling: Just do it.
•    Ferrari Club: Just do it.

A slogan this generic makes it rather fluffy and less effective, doesn’t it?

A good tagline shows a specific product benefit such as M&M’s, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands.”

See the difference?

Unfortunately, most corporate “taglines” are little more than fluff and clichés. Such as McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it™.”

We can substitute quite a bit here:

•    Veggie World: I’m lovin’ it.
•    Zippy Cars: I’m lovin it.
•    Friendly Family Counseling: I’m lovin’ it.

Or Ford’s old one,“Built Ford tough™.” We can insert any car in here: Built Dodge tough. Built Toyota tough…

Stand out from the crowd
See how those “taglines” don’t make the company look unique? An effective tagline should reflect – or better, incorporate – your unique selling proposition (USP).

Think of your USP as the pithy little statement that quickly tells your prospects why they should buy from you.

You get extra bonus points if you evoke emotion too. That gets the mind and body fired up to support you.

Hallmark greeting cards has a good tagline that incorporates their USP and tugs at your emotions: “When you care enough to send the very best.”

That tagline claims product quality and challenges your psyche. It’s saying if you really care, if you want to express yourself in the most thoughtful way possible, you send a Hallmark card.

What if Hallmark said “I’m lovin’ it”?

It probably doesn’t tug on your emotions enough to convince you to spend more on a Hallmark card verses other card, does it?

Another good one is, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” It promises the adventure you may crave and the magical absolution you may need.

Slogan types to avoid
What doesn’t work well are the slogans that focus on the company. Ford’s latest one is simply, “Drive one.”

Hmm…they gave me a command. Do you like being told what to do? I sure don’t. I bet the marketing group who figured that one out thought they were being cool.

Problem here is this slogan turns all of the attention on the company, not the customer.

Such as how Toshiba’s slogan is, “Leading innovation.” It brags about them and doesn’t tell how they benefit me, the person shelling out the dough for their innovation.

For an effective tagline or slogan, do not:
•    Insult the reader
•    Brag about yourself
•    Sound like everyone else
•    Turn the focus on yourself instead of the customer

To create a sales-driven tagline or slogan, be sure it does at least one of these:
1.    Show a benefit
2.    Incorporate your USP
3.    Focus on what the prospect wants
4.    Evoke emotion

If you’re blending in with your competition, analyze your unique selling proposition again for today’s market. Then check it against your tagline or slogan.

A great tagline or slogan is just one way to stand out from your competition. When sending out any sales and marketing material, be sure they contain authority elements too.

Depending on the industry, the beginning of a new year can be incredibly busy or the slowest time of the year. Wherever the start of a new year finds your business, January marks a good time to begin thinking of baseline business strategies. Here are six things that should be reviewed in order to keep your business running smoothly and moving ahead of the competition.

1. Update your website.
   Begin by updating photos. Many businesses use the same photos and graphics for the About Us section or Products/Services section. With new images, viewers realize your website is active. Additionally, add to any blogs or newsletters and revise menus, staffing, or other items. These revisions immediately give your website an inexpensive facelift.
2. Review pricing.
   Costs on shipping, fuel surcharges, supplies, utilities and other day-to-day items can slowly creep up during the year. Review all costs to make sure that pricing is maintained to produce a comfortable profit margin.
3. Mystery shop your own business.
   Have a friend do an internet search for your business, call in to ask a question or schedule an appointment, and visit your location. Ask your friend to give a detailed account of your business so that you can determine how to improve customer service. This is important to get an honest view point that a customer might not be able to give you.
4. Evaluate employee compensation.
   Every business person knows that great employees are hard to find. Keep employees loyal by evaluating compensation in your industry and being competitive in wages and benefits. It is widely written that employee turnover is one of the most expensive costs of business. Avoid these costs by keeping the talent in-house.
5. Re-visit your competition.
   When starting your company, visiting competition was a main activity. Although there doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day, keeping track of the competition is a key ingredient to success. Knowing what bargains key players in the industry are offering, and what events they are participating in, are important to keeping pace. Anticipating growth opportunities that your competitors are pursuing are important to keeping ahead of the game.
6. Get one new thing.
   Strive to add one new item to your business this year. This new item could be a big new client, an addition to your product line or service offering, or a new location or outlet for your services or goods. Adding one new thing to your business stimulates growth by creating fresh interest in your business and increases your client list.

Whether you are updating your web presence or evaluating yourself or your competition, this information is useful in growing a business. Each of these to-do items increases knowledge of the industry and gives a head-start to the new year.

With the rise of social media as a viable communication and advertising tool, companies have changed their marketing campaigns to include (and sometimes rely upon) social media and interactive blog websites. This paradigm shift in advertising and communication takes advantage of nearly free advertising tools and, perhaps more importantly, does well to satisfy the two biggest “recommenders” out there – Google and your friends.

We survive on recommendations

We trust Google to recommend the right websites. We tell them what we’re looking for and (after a few milliseconds of complicated algorithms) they serve up what they think we’ll like, and they do a good job. Remember they’re a business too, and if they didn’t do it well we’d all have switched to another search engine. Thus it’s important that we make Google happy with the information on our websites so that Google will choose to present our site to a searcher when related search terms are used.

Making Google happy is simple, but it takes work. Because Google knows that what people want is valuable information, your site better have that. There are techniques to do this, but providing consistent value is the essence of “organic” search engine optimization (rather than artificially increasing your search result rank by playing with keywords and meta tags).

Apart from Google, we trust our peers (especially our friends but even people we don’t know) to give us personal insight into the value of a product based on their thoughts and experiences. In fact, we trust peer reviews much more than traditional advertising. Social media allows for this desired exchange of information by providing everyone who signs up with the ability to connect, chat, comment and recommend.

Theory in practice

So while all the tools are there, the understanding required to use and run a website and social media profiles comes with practice. We felt like while we could continue just talking to our clients about how to use a program, we didn’t get traction if they weren’t physically doing it themselves.

So we developed a Digital Marketing Workshop to teach the basics and give people hands-on experience. The class is two hours per week for four weeks, and we walk our students through the entire process of purchasing a domain name, hosting, and building a WordPress driven blog-capable website. We show them how to integrate their social media profiles to drive traffic to their sites, and then how to satisfy visitors once they get there.

It has worked really well (we’ve taught four series over the last year), and many of our students are actively using their websites and social media profiles for their businesses. And while you can’t expect to be an expert after eight hours of class time, you can understand the basics and run your own site to achieve significant improvement in consumer awareness and communication. Additionally, we’ve given our students insight into the web-building process so that if they choose to deal with web designers they can have a better chance to not only get the website they want (with the features and style they prefer) but save money as well.

Here’s the link to the workshop.

If you have any questions, feel free to call the NSBDC (784-1717) and ask for Ben or Chuck.

The “Tools for Online Success” site (http://www.google.com/help/sba) features tutorials, video testimonials, and tips from savvy small business people who have leveraged the web to become more efficient, more cost-effective, and more successful.

“The SBA is pleased to partner with Google to put these important tools in the hands of small businesses across the country,” said SBA Administrator Karen Mills.  “As the web evolves and consumers adapt accordingly, we know that more customers are finding traditional ‘Main Street’ businesses online. With these tools for online success, we can ensure these small businesses reach new markets and customers so they can continue to create jobs.”

“One fifth of searches on Google are related to location, which shows that people are looking to the Internet to make decisions about where to go and what to do in their daily lives,” said John Hanke, Vice President of Product Management, Google. “We want to connect our users with the businesses that provide the goods and services they need, but the first step is for those businesses to have an online presence. We’re excited to team up with the SBA to make that process easier for business owners across the country.”

Google and the SBA unveiled the partnership during a forum held today at the SBA’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C., and broadcast live online to press and small business owners across the country.  Susan Holt, Principal and Owner of CulinAerie, a recreational cooking school in downtown D.C., shared her experiences working with the SBA and explained how she has used online tools like Google Places and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to attract more aspiring cooks.

Holt is just one of the many small business owners from across the country who are sharing how they’ve used online tools to reach new customers. Many are featured in the video testimonials found at the “Tools for Online Success” site.  Each video documents the unique success stories that these small businesses have created using online technology:

• Masha Hleap-Hershkovitz, Owner of Fuego Mundo in Sandy Springs, Georgia, uses social media to request feedback from restaurant customers for improvement. Ms. Hleap-Hershkovitz even used social media to name her restaurant.  “We bounced back and forth with a potential name for months, and we were kind of bottle-necked,” she says.  “We put it out there [on social media], and it came back 70 percent ‘Fuego Mundo.’”  Visit http://www.fuegomundo.com.

• Sean Vahey, Owner of Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream in San Francisco launches new menu items and cultivates a worldwide following for his company’s unique ice cream flavors using social media and Google Places. I don’t have a lot of time do marketing,” Mr. Vahey says.  “I don’t have a lot of time to sit down and reach out to people.  I’m able to get on the computer and two minutes later, I’ve gotten the word out…Our Google Places page is important, because it’s got all of our information in one spot – our website, our phone number, you can see where we are on a map, and you can even get directions.” Visit http://www.humphryslocombe.com.

• Sumul Shah, Owner of Lumus Construction in Woburn, Massachusetts, uses its website and online maps to research projects all over the United States and show potential customers examples of its past work.  According to Mr. Shah, “Customers can see and visualize the types of projects and the complexity of the work we do…In the future, our website will not only talk about how much renewable energy we’re building, but we’ll actually quantify it.  We’ll be able to take live data coming from all the wind turbines and solar panels that we’ve installed, simulate it, and be able to report not only how much energy we’re producing, but also what the environmental benefits are.” Visit http://www.lumusinc.com.

• Aliyyah Baylor, Owner of Make My Cake in Harlem, New York City, redesigned her website to display vivid imagery of its baked goods.  Make My Cake is family-owned and operated, and Ms. Baylor says, “Our website is an extension of our business when it’s too busy for someone to answer the phone. It’s our virtual salesperson, and that is very key.”  Visit http://www.makemycake.com.

• Mandy Scott, Owner of Mandy Scott Flowers in San Francisco uses highly targeted online advertising to help her premium flower boutique compete with national brands on a small marketing budget.  She says, “We are tiny compared to the big players.  I can’t hope to compete with them on any kind of national scale, but I feel locally we do very well.  Showing up in both natural and paid search results is important for us because we want to be on a level playing field with the big guns.”  Visit http://www.mandyscottflowers.com.

• Jessica Soler, Owner of Salon Red in Decatur, Georgia, uses a website and local online listings to help her customers find salon locations and book appointments.  She says, “A great example of how the web helps Salon Red is we were nominated with one of the local papers to be a ‘Best Of’ salon in Atlanta, and tons of people went online to vote for all of our locations.  We just were flooded with business, and it all came from online.”  Visit http://www.salonred.com.

• Christopher Bartlett, Owner of Skaters Landing in West Hartford, Connecticut, uses online videos to teach customers from all over the world how to properly shop for and use ice skating products.  “We really were able to reach out to new markets,” says Mr. Bartlett.  “I don’t look at [our online efforts] as a place to go to and hard sell, but to really talk with people and answer some of the questions that people might have.”  Visit http://www.skaterslanding.com.

• Louis Rossetto, CEO of TCHO in San Francisco brings a start-up mentality to his company’s premium chocolate production.  TCHO uses web analytics to constantly improve its website’s layout, ensuring consumers are engaging with its products in the most effective way possible.  “You can’t be a modern company without using modern tools, and online is just fundamental to being in business today,” says Rossetto.  “Our website represents our direct link to our customers.  We use it to explain who we are, engage our community, and it’s certainly a storefront for us.  You’re inviting the whole world into your store if you do that online.”  Visit http://www.tcho.com.

Continued success stories like these are the goal of the Google/SBA partnership.  Visit the “Tools for Online Success” website for a full run-down, but here are a few easy tips all small business owners should be using:

• Establish your online presence. One out of five searches on Google are related to location.  Most local online listings such as Google Places are free, and if your business doesn’t have a website, there are ready-made site templates and free hosting services that make establishing an online presence easy.
• Use free marketing to reach customers. You can build a fan base with free services like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter that keep your customers in-the-know about new products or specials and aware of promotions. These services are great “word of mouth” platforms – where a customer following you might tell their friends about your business.
• Know your customers.  Easy to use web analytics tools can tell you a lot about your customers by analyzing what search term brought them to your website or what they look at while they are there. This information can help you make smart decisions about what you feature and what search terms you should run search ads on.
• Keep an eye on the latest trends.  The growing popularity of smartphones means that more and more customers are searching for local information on the go.  This makes it all the more important that a business’s online presence be accurate and up-to-date. You can link to your menu, give users driving directions, and even post digital coupons.