Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

Dear redbarnshirtco,

What follows is not meant to shoot down your balloon: I want you to succeed. But I also want you to go into this with your eyes wide open.

First of all, "Catchy is Not a Selling Strategy"™ You need a name that is relevant and one that telegraphs the primary benefits and values that your customers (coupon ad buyers and coupon redeemers) will connect with and be able to make use of.

Your coupon redeemers are looking for discounts, savings, and great offers. Your coupon buyers are looking for increases in revenue, higher profits, more customers and, with luck, repeat business.

Before you figure out names might you have a few critical business elements to consider?

How will you entice people in a small town to sign up? What, apart from the coupon, is in it for them? Is the coupon ALONE enough in terms of an incentive. It might not be. Which means you'll need some other offer with an overall higher value in terms of perceived value.

This is critical. Please don't ignore it.

How will you entice the owners of small businesses in a small town to sign up? What, apart from the possibility of a customer, is in it for them? Why should they give YOU money when they might be quite happy with their current press, radio, TV, or in-house, word of mouth set up?

What qualifies you to give vendors anything? What can you promise them that no one else can promise? And what's more, what can you deliver? What is your track record? What is your background? What marketing brilliance have you shone on other vendors and shone with enough radiance to turn them into huge fans?

In both cases above these are the questions you may be asked and if you have no answer, you might have a problem.

The more prepared you are for success, the better your chances become to succeed. The less prepared you are for failure, the higher your chances become that you'll go down in billows of acrid smoke and a shower of sparks. In this latter case you'll look very pretty for a moment or two, but you'll hit the deck with aloud crash. So please, consider the questions you're likely to get.

With no printed books or printed coupons from you, your member must download or print out the coupon on their own. Hmm. Have you thought that not everyone HAS a printer?

Have you thought that by asking your coupon clipping customer to carry out an extra task, you're actually expecting them to do part of what is, in essence, your job?

My point here is that the more steps you make people go through, the more hoops they have to jump through, the less inclined they'll be to actually REDEEM the coupons.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of a deadline, a call to action, and a compelling offer, but many people will not take action the same day. Which means they won't redeem the coupons. Which means they'll become frustrated. Which means they'll eventually unsubscribe, AND they'll probably tell their friends as much, which isn't what you want at all.

Additionally, many people may not open personal their e-mail
until the end of the day, when the merchant in question might be shutting up shop. I'm telling you all this because all in all, it seems to me that you might want to rethink a few critical elements of your plan before you go any farther.

In any buyer/seller relationship there are psychological pathways—essential routes of desire, need, ease, and functionality that MUST remain not only open, but free and clear of all obstructions.

These pathways must be idiot proof. They must offer super simplistic ways for the buyer to get what he or she wants right there and then, or, at the very least, they must offer the buyer the ability to pay or redeem or otherwise take part on THEIR terms, not on the terms of the merchant, which in this case, is you.

Your extra steps: the printing, the redeeming that day and so on, they all say "Stay away!", they all say "We'd like to help you, but we want to make life easier for us first. Sorry!"

Buyers don't like this. They don't like it at all.

Imagine you are buying shoes. On the rack in the store there is just one shoe for every pair of shoes. You go to the register and ask to try on the second shoe, only to be told that the other shoe will be delivered the next day, or that in order to try on the second shoe, you must redeem a coupon from that day's newspaper, a newspaper that's only for sale at the other end of the mall and from a newsstand that is only open every other day and today is one one of its off days.

Would you pay for the single shoe and wait until the following day so that you could then go back to the mall, buy the newspaper, clip the coupon, and go back to the store to get the second shoe?

Probably not.

How might you feel about shoe buying if, next door to the first shoe shop, there was a second shoe shop, into which you could stroll at your leisure, locate the shoes of your size and choice, try them on, decide to buy them, and march up to the register where you can pay, have your goods bagged, and be on your way in a matter of minutes?

The NEXT time you were shopping for shoes, where would YOU shop?

This is what I mean about psychological pathways. Block them at your peril. Figure out more things in your process, THEN consider names. I know this is all a huge pain in the rear, but effort now might save all kinds of headaches down the line.

I hope this helps. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Dear redbarnshirtco,

OK. Just wanted to see how the land lies. Here are my humble suggestions for names:

Deal of the Day
Coupon Express
Local Trader
Keeping It Local
Mountaintop Merchants
Exchange And Mercantile
Click 'n' Save
E-Mail Mercantile
Awesome Offers

I hope these help, or that they spark other ideas. Good luck to you.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Dear Crystal,

No worries on the points, and your reply is greatly appreciated.
I answer questions on this forum to help people, if I can. Am I always right? Nope. Am I always wrong. Not always.

Sometimes, yes, I'm off base—WAY OFF, but I'm always honest; I always tell the questioner I'm responding to what I think, whether they like it or not. My comments are always intended to help. I call it the way I see it. Your detailed response to my line of inquiry earlier certainly filled in several blanks, so thank you for that.

As your coupon business takes off, PLEASE post more questions and when you do, add as much detail as you can: it helps everyone, you as the questioner, and the people offering answers.

Good luck to you. I hope things really take off for you, truly I do.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA