Before you read any further, go ahead and subscribe to my blog feed by clicking on the “Subscribe to RSS Feed” link to your right above the archives list. Although some blogs send you posts everyday, which may be good depending on the type of work you do, you’ll only receive one or two posts from me each week (unless you demand more, just ask). And that’s if I’m not too busy helping clients increase their revenue with fantastic promotional writing services or helping technology companies reduce support costs with easy-to-read (and use) manuals with our technical writing services.

Okay, so I inserted a shameless plug. Well, in my opinion, the plug isn’t shameless, but rather an attempt to help Young Copy continue to build its brand as the number one professional writing services company in the world. And we’re well on our way to achieving that goal. In 2008, Young Copy experienced tremendous growth, signing on big brand clients in the hosting, software, and technology industries. You will read about those clients in future case studies, a section I can now update quickly with our new content management system.

Even though I am the driving force behind Young Copy, I had to hire new talent to help me get projects completed on time. When I say new talent, I mean people who can research any topic and find valuable, solid sources I can use to backup my powerful copywriting. I mean people who can edit, checking for spelling and grammar, making sure our documents are polished and ready for the public. I mean people who can write instructions on how to use the most demanding software, who aren’t afraid to get down and dirty with technology. And they all have one thing in common – they meet my expectations, they exceed client expectations.

Now we can call ourselves a team, complete with a few top-notch researchers, editors, and some up-and-coming technical writers. We’ve got class. And in the coming year I am pulling all the stops. Young Copy will make every effort to market its services just like we do for our clients. Helping clients increase their sales and revenue on a daily basis (or saving on support costs) involves a lot of creativity backed by years of experience and professionalism.

To help support Young Copy’s ideology and enhance the brand further, I developed the “writing for revenue” slogan. Every company must earn revenue in order to stay in business. And every company wants to increase revenues. After all, if you’re the CEO of a company, or one of the top executives, your goal is to understand the big picture – more sales equals more revenue. And if you run your business like a pro, more revenue turns into more profit; something we all strive for in our business. Young Copy is no exception.

So how does Young Copy help businesses increase sales and revenue? We write. We write for revenue. Young Copy spends every day working on writing copy that motivates readers to take action, to download a product, to read a brochure, to purchase that new product or service. Young Copy spends every day working on creating some of the best user manuals, online documentation, and software guides to help companies build their self-help systems, thereby reducing support costs. Lower support costs means more money you can put back into your business. And the more you can put back into your business, the more revenue you can earn (assuming you’re running it like a pro).

So what do we do on a daily basis? We spend our time writing. What do we help our clients increase on a daily basis? We help our clients increase their revenue. Put it all together and you get “writing for revenue.” That’s what we do. And that’s what we’ll continue to do. Except we get better with each new project. Our clients experience significant success. As a result, we have bigger, more compelling, and more successful case studies to tell (show) the world. With the new Young Copy website, we’ll do just that.

One of the first phases of showing you the evidence of my (the Young Copy team’s) hard work is our new video testimonials coming in January 2009. I will personally be introducing five new video testimonials and a cool new case study video testimonial, each released over an eight week period. These videos are extremely nice. The sound is crisp and the production is high quality like all Young Copy projects. I’m sure once you see one testimonial, you’ll want to see the rest. To make it easy, I have created a new mailing list. I promise (I guarantee) not to spam you with anything other than a blurb and a link to new videos as they are released.

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First, take a look at the Dependable Solutions case study. Then read the previous blog post Developing A Winning Advertising Slogan. Once you have read the case study and the previous blog post, you should have an idea as to what Dependable Solutions provides to their clients. To sum up, they help organizations achieve the following:

• A Manageable IT Infrastructure
• A Stable, Secure Network and Computer Setup
• 99.9% Uptime

The New Slogan

I came up with a few slogans the company could use, but ultimately we decided on “Your Technology Management Experts” as the new slogan.

Remember the Peer1 and SingleHop slogans I discussed previously? Both start with “We” and state what the company does for its clients. For the Dependable Solutions slogan, I used “Your” instead of “We” to help establish a personal connection with the company’s target audiences. Instead of saying “Your Technology Management Experts,” I could have stated, “We Are Technology Management Experts.” The slogan would still be powerful, but by using the word “Your,” Dependable Solutions can build a more personal connection.

Since the company manages technology solutions for its clients, I decided to use a form of “manages” and “technology” in the slogan. And to distinguish Dependable Solutions from other companies, I incorporated the word “Experts.” Take the personal connection factor “Your,” combine that with “Technology Management,” then add “Experts” to round it out.

Success Today

The slogan, along with the postcards, website copy, and brochure copy, was launched November 2007. Today, eight months later, Dependable Solutions has doubled its number of employees, opened a new store front for home users needing technology assistance, and expanded into new vertical markets. The company is consistently increasing revenues, adding new clients and employees, and developing new relationships with its new marketing copy and new winning slogan.

Coming Up…

In the coming weeks, I will share more topics and ideas on creating and developing winning advertising slogans.

1. Developing a winning slogan for Young Copy. Since I develop business slogans for my clients, why not go ahead and develop one for Young Copy.

2. Launching the new Young Copy slogan. Will it be successful? I think so. After all, if I develop winning slogans for my clients, I can do the same for Young Copy.

Slogans, a favorite topic

One of my favorite topics – developing a winning slogan. Aside from it being easy, at least it is for me, developing a slogan is one of the best things you can do for your company. But unless you understand the fundamentals of how to develop a catchy slogan that will stay in the minds of your customers, do not attempt to develop one on your own. So before you consider creating a slogan for your business, take a look at the following process I use when I create slogans for Young Copy clients.

Two sides to great slogans

First you need to understand there are two sides to every great slogan. One side represents what you do and the other side represents how what you do benefits your customers. Each side can consist of one or multiple words. And when you bring both sides together, you have an effective business slogan. For example, I wrote about PEER 1’s “We Get IT” slogan a while back. Let’s break the slogan into multiple pieces.

“We” represents PEER 1. “Get IT” represents how customers benefit from using PEER 1. If you read the We Get IT – Great Branding? blog post, you know “IT” is a play on “it” and “Information Technology.” And you know that I think using a play on words as PEER 1 did is brilliant. You do not always have to use a play on words, but in some cases it could help you distinguish your company’s slogan from your competitors’ slogans – if they even have a slogan.

Don’t have a slogan?

Most companies do not have slogans, much less a catchy slogan. If they do, at least based on my experience, they rarely get it right. On top of rarely getting it right, the ones that do usually spend way too much money to have a team of creative people come up with the right words to burn on people’s memories. I’m not suggesting that everybody who reads this can go out and create a slogan on their own and it be good, but it will help you understand what you need to know if you decide to work with your own marketing team or you decide to outsource your “slogan” project to a professional.

Get a free Information Technology (IT) or related slogan.

You’ll like SingleHop’s slogan

Back to the two sides of a company slogan. Even though the entire slogan should represent your company and what you do for customers, the first side should represent your company’s services in one or two words. Jot down a few words that describe your company’s solutions, services, or products. For example, SingleHop, a managed dedicated server company, created the “We Manage IT Differently” slogan. Again we see a play on words using “it” and “IT” for Information Technology.

Side A: “We Manage IT”

Side B: “Manage IT Differently”

Side A represents what SingleHop does best – they manage Information Technology. In this case they manage dedicated servers.

Side B represents what they do for customers – they manage Information Technology different than their competitors.

Making the slogan better

Could the slogan be better? Absolutely. But it’s still a useful advertising slogan because it intrigues customers and motivates customers to find out how SingleHop manages Information Technology differently. Of course, their slogan has no meaning to you unless you are shopping for a new dedicated server hosting company and you need a company to provide management services for your dedicated server.

To make their slogan better, let’s follow the logical process I use when I develop slogans for my clients. We know that SingleHop provides dedicated server hosting and manages dedicated servers. But I have one question – how do they do it differently? Actually I have many questions. Do they do it cheaper? Do they have better support? Do they have more qualified engineers managing dedicated servers? Do they have better software in place? Is their network better? I could go on until I have exhausted every question imaginable. Yes, it takes asking the right questions, and in some cases, a lot of the right questions in order to come up with an advertising slogan that does its job well. On the other hand, it may only take a few questions to get the best information needed to develop a winning slogan for your company.

Looking into the future

Or maybe it goes back to my original point that “it intrigues customers and motivates customers to find out how SingleHop manages Information Technology differently.” Maybe customers see the slogan and start a conversation with the SingleHop team to learn more about how they do it differently. If that’s the case, the slogan should work well. Down the road I will interview the SingleHop team and find out how well their company slogan is working.

Related posts and more

1. Developing a winning slogan for a technology management company.
Learn how I created a slogan to help a technology management company stay in the minds of their clients.

2. Developing a winning slogan for Young Copy.
Since I develop business slogans for my clients, why not go ahead and develop one for Young Copy.

3. Launching the new Young Copy slogan. Will it be successful? I think so. After all, if I develop winning slogans for my clients, I can do the same for Young Copy. Blog post coming soon!

Post your comments

I want your opinion(s). Agree or disagree with this post? Have a better slogan in mind? Want to challenge the post in any way? Post your comments today. Let me know what you think.

I talk to people in the software and hosting industry daily. And since one of my most popular services is press release writing and distribution, Parallels always comes up in the conversation. Either my client mentions the name first or I ask them to give me their 30 second history on the company. To date, everyone I talk to in the industry accurately describes the company’s history. So how does a software company develop a new brand, launch the new brand, and become a well known name in the industry – and do it in less than three months?

Parallels® (formerly SWsoft) is a worldwide leader in virtualization and automation software that optimizes computing for consumers, businesses, and service providers across all major hardware, operating system, and virtualization platforms. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with 900 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia.

I personally think Parallels has an impressive marketing strategy, dating back to Plesk, their hosting control panel company. The marketing team at Parallels knows exactly what it takes to build a brand and gain recognition in the industry. Based on what I see everyday in hosting news related sites, Parallels takes advantage of press releases. From mid January 2008 to today, Parallels has released at least 15-20 press releases. That’s an average of five a month. I recommend to my clients they should release at least 1-2 times a month and if budget allows, distribute press releases four times a month.

Imagine what Parallels (or your company) could achieve if they utilized optimized press release writing services.

In the future I hope to interview the brilliant minds around the new Parallels brand. Hopefully I can chat with Kurt Daniels to learn more about the new Parallels initiative. I am most curious to see how well their press release marketing strategies help increase sales for their flagship products:

Parallels Desktop for Mac
Parallels Virtuozzo Containers
Parallels Plesk Control Panel

Meanwhile, please sign up for the Young Copy feed by clicking on the “Subscribe to RSS Feed” graphic to your right. If you have questions regarding how a well planned, well written, and well executed press release marketing strategy can help you achieve better branding and more revenue, please send your questions via the Contact form.

I think the name is great. We all have our heroes – The Incredible Hulk anyone? The banner ad said “Free Web Hosting” and flashed “With No Ads.” At the bottom of the ad was the WebHero logo (shown above). Typically I would not click on a free web hosting ad, but I had to check this one out. I almost never come across a free web hosting company that has such a great company name. That said, there must be something else to it.

When the WebHero site loads, it shows four products. The first product in WebHero’s matrix is the “Free Web Hosting” package – the one mentioned in the banner ad. In the second slot, WebHero highlights the “Everything Hosted” package in green as the “Best Selling Plan.” At $4.95 you get 10GB of storage space, 1500 throughput (bandwidth), an ecommerce cart, priority phone support, tons of email accounts, even MySQL databases.

The point of this blog is not to sell you on WebHero’s products and services, rather I want to point out how effective company branding can be in terms of attracting new customers. Even though I would not use a free web hosting service, WebHero caught my attention and almost sold me on their paid hosting plan.

How?

1. Great branding.
2. Extreme simplicity (design and copy).
3. Great color scheme.
4. Everything I would need in a hosting package.
5. Great pricing model.

WebHero, like many other companies I feature in this blog, has done a great job branding their company. Especially in today’s overly saturated shared web hosting market, branding plays an even more important role in the success of a company that primarily sells shared hosting services.

Great job WebHero. Keep up the good work.

Typically the first place I look is in the marketing department. After visiting Peer1’s Management Team page, I immediately found Rajan Sodhi, VP of Marketing/Communications for the company. Under Rajan’s profile he has a link to his blog. I figured he would discuss the “We Get IT” slogan there and quickly found out I was right. Rajan’s Big marketing for small business shed new light on the subject. I had to scroll down a bit to find the exact post, but the We Get IT post not only shed some light on the slogan, but opened many new things to discuss including video marketing, viral marketing, contest marketing, and so much more.

More on video, viral, and contest marketing in future blog posts. Back to the Peer1 slogan. Rajan and his team have a clear vision of what they do, or want to do, for their customers. Personally, I think the slogan is brilliant. What I would really like to know is how long they spent coming up with the slogan and the process(es) they took to reach that point. Did they define their target market? Did they profile their ideal customer? Did they have to segment their audience? What or who sparked the creativity? And the biggest, and most important question of them all, has the new slogan helped increase sales?

Hopefully soon I can get an interview with Rajan and find out more details. Most marketing executives are really passionate about their achievements so I’m sure Rajan will be more than enthusiastic to share some insight on the success of the new slogan.

To answer the post’s question “We Get IT – Great Branding?” the answer is, well, yes! The true test will be the statistics six months out, a year out, even two years down the road. Branding is essential to the success of your business and will help you stand out from the crowd in any industry, even one as saturated as the hosting industry.

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You bet it was. Why? Their goal, according to the Mailtrust Blog, says “the new name better reflects our commitment to business email hosting and building trust with our customers.” They are right on. Webmail.us does not in any way imply trust or commitment. Instead, it suggests a more generic reference to a mail service and does not capture their intended target audience – businesses. Business email hosting is critical. There are many competitors out there with the strongest brands leading the way.

The way they announced the change other than a press release is reflected on their homepage at http://www.mailtrust.com. I think their graphic representation is brilliant. Easy to understand, easy to read. It just makes sense. And the slogan they included underneath the announcement says “Same Company. Same People. New Look.” is an excellent endeavor to show customers that Mailtrust is still the same company, just more focused on building trust in their customers.

At first glance I thought, why not capitalize the “t” in Mailtrust, but then I realized they want to keep the same nomenclature as Rackspace by keeping the second word lower-case. Would MailTrust work better? Based on the success of Rackspace, it all comes down to great marketing and product/service performance. Clearly the team at Rackspace knows how to build a brand so I trust their decision to keep the “t” lower-case should work just fine.

Maybe in the future I can secure an interview with Pat Matthews, President of Mailtrust, and see what kind of impact the new name and merge with Rackspace has had on the company. Pat also maintains a great blog, “Small Town, Big Ideas” at http://patsweblog.com.