Hi all,

I'm also looking at creating new animated banners for my website and would really appreciate some creative help on the slogan to be used on them. If you look at SalesGuide you'll see that it's all about busineses advertising their retail sales and consumers finding out about them. So I'm looking for two slogans, jingles or catchphrases one aimed at each of these sectors.

You'll see that we currently use a fairly plain and simple logo aimed at conveying the message like a sale sign stuck over a sale board for a property that has been sold. So what I need now is to build on this and find the right slogans to go with it. On this, my starting ideas were as follows but please don't be influenced by them.

For advertisers and retailers some theme ideas might be:

"A premier reference site for Sales, Discounts and Special Offers" or
"Where do you advertise your Sales, Discounts and Special Offers" or
"The new and smarter place to advertise your Sales"

So in an animated banner perhaps :

Slide 1 The new
Slide 2 and smarter way
Slide 3 to advertise
Slide 4 your Sales
Slide 5 Display the logo

perhaps also cycle on some pics of sales or some logos of particpating retailers. For site visitors and members:

"Where do you find the best sales in town" or
"Join to be amongst the first to hear about great sales" or
"Looking for the best Sales in Town!"

I thought something along the lines of:

Slide 1 Looking for
Slide 2 the best sales
Slide 3 in town!
Slide 4 SalesGuide logo

with possibly some cycling with some pics of sales.

It would be even better if I could find the one slogan that fits both needs. Hopefully I've adequately described what I need and I would really appreciate any help on this.

Thanks heaps,
Adam

Hi Adam,

Here are some thoughts for what they're worth.

1) In terms of a tagline/slogan - that is usually part of your branding and would appear everywhere - business cards, t-shirts, business stationery, website, etc etc etc. Therefore, it is probably easier if you only have one statement, rather than 2 (1 for each market). Although I understand the inclination to have 2 in this instance.

2) Some things to consider when creating a tagline:
- memorability
- whether it encapsulates what you do and for whom, or what problem you solve
- how "viral" it is e.g. how easy it is for someone to remember, understand and pass on to another person
- cadence and rhythm etc.
- injecting some personality and demonstrating how you're different, interesting or unique
- specifically pointing out a USP (to the degree that USPs exist anymore)

3) It would be helpful if you gave us more information about what you do, why you do it and for whom. When you say "sales" do you mean like "january sales" ie. when and where people can get bargain retail purchases?

Hope this helps,
Jane

Hi and thanks for your awesome reply Jane

I totally agree with your first point and conceded this at the end of my post when I said "It would be even better if I could find the one slogan that fits both needs." So my preference would be to have only the one statement if possible.

Is it possible to encapsulate all the items that you've raised in your second point? I just love that word viral. Could you please let me know what USP means?

Regarding your third point, your interpretation of what I meant about "sales" is spot on. Please visit www.salesguide.com.au and hopefully within minutes it will become crystal clear.

Your thoughts are worth a lot Jane. This is my first business venture and whilst I don't have anywhere near the budget of the top 500, in fact I'm way down the other end of the scale, what I love about the Internet is that it gives everyone an almost even playing field whereby even this father and son business can get access to firstly copywriter experts like yourself and the so many here that obviously give so freely of their valuable time and expertise, and secondly access to same global market, or should I call it a global village!

Thanks again ever so much for your reply.

Adam

Adam,

Yes - but it might take some skill.

USP = Unique selling position or proposition (take your pick). In layman's terms - whatever differentiates your business when compared to competitors.

My personal take is that no one can help you write your tagline to be a meaningful communication to potential clients/customers without a deeper understanding of your business. Otherwise, we are just playing with words. We might get some great words, but if they don't represent your business, then they're not going to do their job.

My honest opinion is that people on a forum who don't understand the fundamentals of your business are not in the best position to help you create a tagline. But you've given me an idea for my marketing mentoring - an exercise to help people create their tagline!!

Jane

Hi Jane

OK but at least doable.

OK I now follow the original point that you were making.

Retailers advertise their sales.....shoppers look in the one place to find the details of what sales are on. That's really it, nothing really more complicated to understand. These are "the fundamentals of the business". You've now got me thinking what other details I would need to provide so that one can have that deeper understanding of the business?

Great that you too have gotten something out of this dialogue. Would this exercise help me in my current plight? Can I ask you what do you think about "Click, Search and Save" as the slogan?

Thanks again for taking the time. Much appreciated. BTW I love that janeology bit. I assume that it's related to http://www.janeology.com

Adam

"Where are the bargains always on sale?"

"Can we flood your next sale with customers?"

All he wanted was some slogans.

You guys sure do a lot of talking.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

P.S. Just TEASING

The first thing that comes to mind when I visited your site is that none of the 3 words in your tagline--"Click", "Search" and "Save"--carry any emotional velocity online. They're tired and trite and their overall effectiveness is triply reduced by occurrence of all three in succession.

I found the following buried on your about page:

As you can see, what you're offering is convenience and information.

Assuming you're a unique service and don't have any competitors, the benefits of your service are your USP (your Unique Selling Proposition). You're business is inherently unique and your slogan should express the main benefit/s.

Create an attention grabbing headline by expressing what you do more succinctly. "Price Shoppers: Don't waste valuable time and energy hunting for the best deals in (place), let them come to you." You'll want to acquire retail partners through other methods so focus on the end user, the shopper. You might consider setting up an email notification system once you get big enough which groups people signed up for your mailing list by interest and alerts them to relevant discounts as they are posted ala Amazon.com.

If you are directly competing with other one-stop discount shopping portals, then the above statement taken from your site is a description of your business model, which you will have in common with other one-stop discount portals, and your slogan will be based on a point-of-difference of your own invention. Meaning, you must conceptualize some additional appeal that makes doing business with you preferable to doing business with your competitors.

It could be that you cater to an upscale market who bargain shops.

You could start a newsletter designed to connect these upscale buyers with an eclectic array of high end (but heavily discounted) items. Retailers could pay you to "be reviewed" in it. You help the buyers make an informed purchase, and you turn a nice profit for intermediating.

It could be that go above and beyond in the service department.

You could have a service for your ongoing retail partners that helps write measureably better ads, and then you can use the PROOF to get the attention of other retailers who aren't yet onboard, and thus broadening the overall discount selection for your shoppers. How's that for a USP?

Now, it looks like yours is a regional classified. That could also be your USP. Identifying your prospects by demographic or region is a perfectly valid USP if you're the only one using it. The important thing to understand is that you need only provide one thing which sets you apart, which you can express, which you uniquely possess, and which you can lord over your competitors in all your marketing efforts in order to have a good USP.

Hope that helped.