The Found Gen

Marketing That Works.

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What Makes a Slogan Effective?

The term “slogan”—defined as a “word or phrase that is easy to remember and is used by a group or business to attract attention”—is derived from the Scottish word for a war cry. It’s a pretty fitting etymology, when you think about it. An effective slogan cries out into the marketplace the essence of a business. It becomes entrenched in consumers’ minds, guiding their subconscious thought patterns, perceptions and, hopefully—ultimately—their decision making. It is a perpetual (and free) advertisement.

So what makes an effective slogan? Surely you can think of a few examples almost immediately. Some employ alliteration: Fly the friendly skies. (United) Some rhyme: Nationwide is on your side. Some do both: Easy breezy beautiful Covergirl. Some are brief but provocative: Think different. (Apple) Just do it. (Nike) Some are longer but poignant: When you care enough to send the very best. (Hallmark) There are some things that money can’t buy. For everything else there’s MasterCard. 

Some proclaim to be the best: The ultimate driving machine. (BMW) The breakfast of champions. (Wheaties) The king of beers. (Budweiser) Others proclaim to make you your best: The best a man can get. (Gillette) Man at his best. (Esquire) Then there are the rare but effective slogans that successfully command: Don’t leave home without it. (American Express) Eat fresh. (Subway) And those, perhaps even more rare, that redefine a product or service in the public’s mind by becoming a universal truth: A diamond is forever. (De Beers)

Effective slogans employ one or more of several key tactics for speaking to consumers. Keep these guidelines in mind, and you’ll be sure to have an effective, lasting free advertisement slogan for your business.

  • Speak the truth. Tell your story. What do you make, or offer? How do you make, or offer, it? Resist the temptation to exaggerate. Merely labeling your product “the top” or “number one” won’t fly with consumers, because a) they won’t believe you—everyone says they’re the best! And b) it’s not unique enough to make an impression. Many kinds of coffee are delicious and high-quality, but only Maxwell House is Good to the last drop!
  • Highlight a key benefit. Differentiate your product or brand from your competitors so consumers will immediately understand your unique position in the marketplace. Narrow things down to your business’s essential traits and build a persuasive, impactful slogan on them. Don’t be afraid to leave things out. One defining statement—Great taste, less filling. (Miller Lite) Where’s the beef? (Wendy’s)—is all you need.
  • Be clever and use emotion. There are many things to sell in this world and only so many ways to describe them. Highlight your unique perks or company ethos through language that will move consumers. For example, Visa isn’t “The best payment method” or “The most accepted form of credit card.” It’s everywhere you want to be. The U.S. Marine Corps isn’t “An elite group of leaders.” They’re The few, the proud, the Marines.
  • Keep it short, but not too short. Two-word slogans are often called taglines…they’re tough to make memorable. Two or three words doesn’t give you a lot of room to express anything meaningful, which is critical for a slogan. Ad Age had a great article about this phenomenon a while back. Can you distinguish between Inspired performance, Pursuing perfection, and Intelligent performance? Unless you’re in the auto biz, probably not. (Infiniti, Lexus, Porsche) Longer slogans make a bigger impact—7 to 10 words should do it. Think of all the meaning and info contained in these two excellent examples: Melts in your mouth, not in your hands. (M&Ms) All the news that’s fit to print. (The New York Times)
  • Get help. Sometimes you’re too close to your own business to identify the best slogan. Outsiders can help you understand how customers view your brand or industry and offer guidance in crafting the clearest, most motivating message. And once you’ve got it, make it work for you.

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Twitter for Late Adopters

You might be embarrassed to admit it (or maybe up until now you’ve been proud to declare it), but: you’ve never used Twitter. Beyond the anecdotes and major gaffes that make it into the mainstream news, you haven’t read anyone’s carefully composed 280-character message to the universe—sorry, Twitterverse. You don’t have a handle, and you’re not entirely sure why (or how) so many people are so hooked on the short-form, self-labeled “information network.”

But now you’ve started a business, or a new job, and you need to get up to speed fast. We’re here to help. Because if you have a business or are trying to succeed in most any business field, you should know how to use this valuable communication tool. May we present a brief Twitter primer for late adopters.

How to Get Started

1. Create an account. (You can do this online or from your mobile device.) One of the first things you’ll need to do is choose a “handle,” or user name. Don’t choose anything too obscure—your goal is to establish a cohesive, consistent “personality” to represent your brand, and keeping the basics straightforward will build trust and attract more followers. Plus, using your real information makes your business easy to locate should someone search for it. Upload a profile picture, either your logo or an image representative of your service.

2. Start forming your community. Twitter was designed to facilitate conversations. The people you follow are the ones whose posts, or “tweets,” you’re reading, and the people who follow you are the ones who will see your messages. Choose from among the suggested Twitter accounts or use the search bar to discover people, news sources or businesses you know and, perhaps more important, those you don’t. Look for shared interests, locations or contacts; check out followers of users you follow; experts in an area that’s relevant to your business or in an area that you’d like to learn more about.

Finding Your Voice

Decide in advance what your business goals are for using Twitter (e.g., to build a following, like a food truck, or to generate sales leads) and let that inform the “voice” you will present to the world; then each and every tweet, comment, picture—everything you post should be consistent with that voice and align with those goals.

As a new user, it’s a good idea to start out by retweeting (reposting something from another user, labeled “RT”) or reacting to messages from accounts you find interesting. This will make your posts more visible to other users and lets them know what topics are important to your business; once people get a sense of your voice, they will engage with and hopefully follow your brand.

For more nuts and bolts, Twitter has a solid broad-strokes guide to getting started, and Mashable offers a wide variety of resources for new users.

Use the #hashtag thoughtfully. The hashtag is a word or phrase immediately preceded by the hash (#) symbol that’s used to identify messages by topic; this “tagging” method turns those words into a searchable link. As Twitter has evolved, so has the hashtag, expanding beyond a functional tool into its own form of microconversation. You can use them to discover trending topics or people who share interests with your business, or to add an element of playfulness, irony, context or wittiness to your tweets. But don’t clutter your posts with a zillion hashtags; two or three per tweet is plenty.

The Rules of Engagement

1. Follow and be followed. You don’t have to, and shouldn’t, follow everyone who mentions your company. Some users operate by following anyone who follows them; others follow users who “favorite” one of their tweets; and still others follow a person or business because they’re simply a fan or customer. The first approach can result in having an uninterested, unresponsive community receiving your messages. Read users’ bios and consider the context in which they’re talking about your brand or industry before you follow them.

2. Remember to listen to others. Just like in real life, no one likes the guy at the party who talks incessantly about himself. People use Twitter to interact; if you are only ever broadcasting content, and not engaging with your followers, they will eventually stop listening. You can judge how successful a listener your account is by how many people are following you; if you’re not gaining followers, it might be because you’re not taking the time to understand how your customers behave.

3. And mention others. As you begin posting your own content, whether original or retweets, you can begin to spark dialogue or interest among readers by mentioning other users by name (@username). Note: If you do the mention at the beginning of your post, that’s called a reply and will be seen only by that user.

4. Go visual. Pictures are just as effective on Twitter as anywhere else. It’s a great way to share your business’s latest endeavor without mincing words to stay under the character limit.

Best Practices for Business

  • Be authentic and credible. Aim to build a reputation as a trusted source of information for your brand and industry.
  • Take the time to observe your potential customers and their behavior. Research to see if any conversations are happening around your brand, as well as your competitors. Use the results to devise a communication strategy.
  • Engage your followers. Ask questions and let your business’s personality or viewpoint shine through in conversations.
  • Be wary of using Twitter as a forum for blatant product or brand promotion. This one-way approach works for only a small number of business categories. Remember: In general, people use Twitter to communicate, not shop.
  • Focus your efforts: It’s better to have a well-defined, narrow realm of subject matter for your tweets—which should be directly relevant to your business and its customers—than to try to cover too many topics with so-so posts.
  • Reserve live-tweeting for live events. Make enlightening observations or share very interesting quotes from featured speakers, guests or attendees; don’t merely report the action as it unfolds.

Of course, after everything, you might be thinking, Who has time for all this?! And you’d be right: Managing a Twitter account for a business takes a lot of time and thought. With some practice, it gets easier, but you always need a strategy and fresh ideas. If you’d like some professional help with managing your business’s account, please drop us a line. Then you’ll be freed up to focus on managing your personal account…right?

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Character Limits on a Meta Title: Are They In The Right Range?

Businesses everywhere are struggling now more than ever to keep up with the fast pace of technology and its impact on advertising. These days the answers to everyone’s questions rest in search engine results, and getting your business’s message to appear near the top of Google results depends on how strong your meta title (and meta description) is.

What’s a Meta Title?

Put simply, meta titles show the name of a web page. It’s the headline that you see on Google and are a main factor in correctly indexing a given page on your website.

What’s a Meta Description?

Meta descriptions are the HTML attributes used to summarize in what your website is all about. They are literally the text you see in the results that appear after you have entered a search. For example, if you were to ask Google “Who sings that Italian song from ‘The Sopranos’?”, among your mixed results you would find several blue hyperlinks (meta-titles) to various websites with a few words (meta-descriptions) that give you a little more information about what the site contains, all before you eventually were able to discover and put “Con te Partito” on repeat and identify with Carmela.

The goal here is obviously to get your message as close to the top as possible and persuade users to trust that message enough to click on it.

How to optimize your meta title and meta description

Brevity is the soul of wit, and the programmers responsible for social media and search engines know this. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, et al know their audience and distinguish themselves from Polonius by putting limits on their content, appealing to short attention spans everywhere. Search engine giants are no different. Just type “what happens to hamlet” in any search engine, and of the 4,690,000 results that come back in 0.34 seconds, some number of the top 10 will have meta-titles and descriptions that both spoil a wonderful story and are cut off and shortened by ellipses…

This is because search engines truncate results that are too long. When filling in your meta-data, use your keywords intelligently but economically. Create a compelling and concise description—ideally between 150-160 characters long—that is both readable and relevant to increase click-through rates and get the most out of your search marketing.

It’s worth noting that the meta description tag is not something Google’s algorithm takes into consideration when delivering results. It’s real marketing value rests in the people who actually read it, for oftentimes it is the first thing people will read about your business.

So keep it short and sweet and describe the content as accurately and colorfully as you can. If you need more help coming up with a meta-tag to boost your search marketing results, feel free to give us a call today.

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5 Grammar Mistakes That Always Get Missed

As a writer you always notice the little grammar mistakes people make when they write. Someone ending a sentence with a preposition, employing a redundant modifier or using “literally” literally any chance they get. It’s enough to drive a person mad—or at least distract you from what they were actually talking about (see?).

For your business the consequences are just as real. The content you put out is an extension of your business, an undeniable representation of your company that is open for consumer judgment. “If they don’t even know the difference between it’s and its, how can I trust they will be able to deliver on their promise of ____.” The relationship between the grammar mistakes you make and the quality of your business may seem alien and unfair, but it’s a reality of the business world we live in—trust us.

They’re, Their, There

A grammar eyesore you no doubt come across on a daily basis in emails is the incorrect use of they’re, their and there. It’s pretty simple, really: One’s a contraction, one’s possessive and one has to do with place. Use they’re when you want to shorten they are. Use there if you could point to it (“over there”). Use their when you’re describing someone’s something. You know the difference between the three, but it’s a good idea to always double check your correspondence to make sure you’re using the right one in the right context — it’s way too easy to make these grammar mistakes even knowing the rules.

There, there–you’ll get the hang of it.

Me and I

You’d think that people would have a solid grasp on the proper use of two of the most selfish words in the English language. Nope. Me and I are two of the most misused words, especially when it comes to writing a sentence with yourself and another group. For instance, you may read, “Scan the documents and send them to Jennifer and I.” But take “Jennifer” out of that sentence and it sounds weird. That’s because I is the object of that sentence—and I should not be used as an object.

To help remind yourself which one is right and when, say the sentence to yourself excluding the other group (“Scan the documents and send them to me”). If it sounds right, it is.

Run-on Sentences

“Brevity is the soul of wit,” but you wouldn’t know it based on the way some people go on and on and on when they write. As the writer, it’s your responsibility to make it as easy possible on your reader, if for no other reason than to keep them reading. One way to do this is by using commas before coordinating conjunctions, such as for, and, but, or, etc. These FANBOYS are useful in separating independent clauses—complete thoughts with subjects and predicates—and commas are their companion cues that help your reader know a new idea is approaching.

Commas

If you’re thinking about using a comma to pause, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner would like to have a word with you and the rest of the writing world. Despite their disdain towards the use of commas, their use and misuse are both quite popular. Here are a couple of rules to keep in mind to make sure your commas are properly filling their role:

  • Conditional, or if-then, statements require a comma to separate the premise from the conclusion. In other words, if you are setting something up, then be sure to put a comma before the “then.”
  • Coordinating conjunctions that separate two independent clauses need a comma to come before them, and that’s all there is to say about that.

Alot and A Lot

You’ll clean up a lot of your grammar mistakes when you realize alot isn’t a word; it’s two.

There are literally an infinite number of additional grammar sins individuals and businesses alike commit every day. But it’s never too late to get back in the good graces of grammar. Feel free to reach out and let us help cleanse your writing and purify your content today.

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Tips For Writing a Great, Click-Worthy Subject Line

Why blog? Why email? Why send anyone anything if they’re not going to read or respond (sidenote: why did you click on this post? Was it the title)?

Most people will tell you it’s about impressions. And most people wouldn’t be wrong…per se. When you get down to the nitty-gritty of it, marketing (content or otherwise) is genuinely about impressions. Magazines are ranked by their impressions, not their subscriptions. Same goes for periodicals. Since most content and publications have moseyed on over to the world wide web, impressions are even more important. People now measure your viral to organic ratios of impressions. So, it’s pretty safe to say that impressions are pretty damn important.

But are they it? You know, the big proverbial it.

In the grand scheme of content and online marketing, we’re looking for more than just impressions. We want clicks. Conversions. Sales. So, how can you drive those things? Especially when most people, including myself, are quick to ignore a sales-driven email that arrives in our inbox?

It’s All About That Subject Line

People, in general, are pretty easy to understand in today’s world. Life is busy. Time is limited. Connections need to be made swiftly and they need to have a point. The very same goes for your email marketing strategy. You need to capture your consumer’s attention in pretty much 6 words or less (just so you know: we spend about as much time on the subject line as we do writing & designing the whole email — it’s that important). Here are some great tips to shortening up your subject line to drive a higher open-rate and generate more sales from email.

Get to The Point: Don’t beat around the bush. Keep your subject line succinct and a fair assessment of what your reader will get if they open your email. Simple is your best friend when it comes to writing subject lines. People don’t need eloquent subject lines, they don’t need stories either. The more direct you are, the faster it is for them to skim over the subject and decide quickly if they want more.

Avoid Spammy Buzz Words: Free, New, Today Only, Sale, Buy, Don’t Miss Out, Your Only Chance, Free, Once in a Lifetime, Opportunity, Free, Download, Free. While fun, these words will fast-track you to the “spam” folder in most inboxes. If you’re lucky enough to get by the spam filter, then you’re dealing with humans who have bee pitched to with enough sales-y garbage to know better.

Give ’em Something to Read About: Content, Content, Content. Despite the fact that we can all argue that people are reading less today than ever before, we can’t argue that people are reading MORE of what they want. Recent studies have shown that consumers today will read a 1200 word article on something that catches their attention but not even bother with a 200 word blog post that doesn’t quite give them something they need. We’re all looking for advice, for insight, for quality content. So, be sure to provide something useful inside your email that your audience can grow to rely on.

Think About What You Open: Take a look at your inbox. Scroll through all the emails that you receive. See which ones catch your attention. Start from there. Once you understand what you’re opening and reading, you’ll get a better feel for what others will open and read. More often than not, what you’re opening are subject lines that are providing you with something you want–while also sharing a bit of who they are. Whether it’s “The Only Bag You’ll Need” from J. Crew or “This Week’s New Music” from Spotify, there’s something in there that will catch your attention. Take a gander and then take a shot at your own subject lines.

These days, time is tight. So, if you don’t have the time to kick-off a killer email strategy, go ahead and outsource. There’s a lot going on in the wide world of online and content marketing. Make sure you’re not getting left behind.

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3 Ways To Add Mojo To Your Email Newsletters

The day Google decided to move all marketing emails into their own filtered tab, I knew we were doing something right for our clients. While most people started to fret about the dreaded “promotions” tab, I got excited. Yes, it meant that businesses were sending so many emails that Google felt it needed to funnel them to a separate section. But it also proved that millions of readers were signing up for email newsletters.

Whether it’s to get wind of the latest sale at their favored retailer or to receive tips and tricks from industry leaders, people are signing up for newsletters at an exponential rate. Email is the preferred method of communication today. On top of that, good email newsletters are easy to make, fast, and most of the time–direct.

Some of you may still be thinking “yes, but I delete over 90% of the email newsletters I receive.” I get it. I do too. But what about that other 10%? Surprisingly enough, some of the most successful email campaigns today only receive a 10-14% open rate and a 3% click-through rate. While those numbers may seem low at first glance, you have to take a look at how that computes numerically. A 10,000 person subscriber list could get 1,000 opens and 30 click-throughs–with an average price point of $100–that’s an easy $3,000. From one email. And that’s if you’re getting the low-end of the response rate.

So, how do you go about getting a higher than average open and click-through rate with your email newsletter? There are a few tricks we have up our sleeves that I don’t mind sharing with you. Our clients average a 25-35% open rate. We’re proud of that. And we’re not of the “keep it secret, keep it safe” mentality. So, here’s a look at our special sauce.

3 Ways To Generate A Higher Open Rate

  1. Subject Line. Subject Line. Subject Line. Leave the SPAM-lines to your competitors. No one wants to see certain words pop up in their inbox. It’s a quick route to an immediate delete if you use certain key words like “Free,” “Get Noticed,” “Try Now,” “You Won’t Believe,” “New.” Basically, anything that you think you want to say to catch someone’s attention will probably place you on a SPAM list. Subject lines are meant to connect you to your reader instantly. So, connect with them. Get to your point–but be you. J.Crew is probably one of my favorite examples of getting it right. Lines like “Our favorite new layering trick”–gets me clicking every time.
  2. Design. Please stop sending email newsletters that look like a regular email. We’ve all been exposed to the clean, beautiful designs that others have sent forth. It’s time to upgrade. There are a bunch of great platforms that provide easy-to-use templates and tracking systems. Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, and Emma are just a few we like. Add some color and some images to your design and you’ll see a huge boost in sales.
  3. Be Direct. People don’t have time to read a mini novella. Get to your point quickly and succinctly. There’s no sense in losing a customer because you keep sending verbose emails with a tiny call-to-action at the very bottom. We want to know what you’re offering. If we get it quickly–we just may buy quickly. There’s no need to waste your time writing something word-heavy. Say what you mean to say and hit send.

Email marketing is sticking around, so it’s important that you learn how to use it to your advantage. Try these few tricks and let us know how they worked for you.