Motto / catch phrase advice?
Motto / catch phrase advice?
I'm no marketing expert and I find it really hard to summarize my product in one short catchy phrase. Right now it is:
Read the Internet: With the elegant Monocle Reader, follow RSS feeds, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs and everything else, all in one place.
But I'm thinking of changing it to something more simple like "Feedly meets Pocket" which piggybacks onto two other successful products and implies Monocle is the result of merging both into a better one.
Why not just be direct and clear?
and instead of saying it's elegant, include a screenshot / video nearby.
This cuts the meaningless BS like "read your internet your way" and instantly shows the value to people who may be interested in something like that.
At least my suggestion serve to contrast what you don't want 😅
Also I’d say this:
For a landing page, you have only two assets at your disposal to capture user’s attention: the copy (title and 10–15-word value prop) and the graphic (screenshot / short video / gif). Use them wisely. If your graphic says it all, then you can get more creative with the copy, but usually you want them both to work towards the goal of the user to understanding what your offer is and picking it over the others.
Please don’t take that personally. I too once had the phase when I was coming up with those "taglines that sell" (spoiler: they don’t). But now I think the times when they could impress anybody are gone, and it’s always better to be direct and clear. Especially if you’re not an established brand yet.
For the sake of citation, here’s an article I recently saw posted on IH (see point 2): https://medium.com/@darynakulya/4-unexpected-lessons-after-y-combinator-bd5f036a1c55
That's an interesting article, thanks for sharing.
Right now I'm working on the copy, and I think after all the feedback on this post I've come with a nice one, that gets the best of both worlds, meaning it would attract those who already use Feedly and/or Pocket and it sums up pretty well what Monocle does too: all your stuff in one place.
It'd be like this: https://imgur.com/a/7YXF0Jf
What do you think guys? @PaulD @OscarRyz @hiimsnowman @mark1nhu @LucaOprea @frankdilo (btw, huge thanks for all your comments!)
Aside from what I said in my other recent reply, subjectively I don’t like that every word has different weight. Come on, the lines are short, you don’t need to use bold text there. Rely on phrasing instead. With different font weights it just feels too messy.
It’s up to you in the end.
You're right. I did that last night before going to sleep and now I just woke up and find it totally awkward.
What about this? https://imgur.com/a/NdeQeah
Content you follow, at a glance.
Twitter, YouTube, blogs and feeds, all in one place.
I don’t know so much about the word "content". Sounds like corporate lingo and devoid of any sentiment, like belonging to a phrase "visitors consume content".
Also content is, like, too broad. "Updates from websites you follow", now, is more tangible. As far as I understand, part of your offer is, "If your desired site is not supported yet, tell us and we’ll add it."
P.S. I’m not a native speaker, just so that you know. The advice is based purely on how I "feel" the language.
I'm not a native speaker either so... well... haha.
I lean more towards 'content' because it includes sites like YouTube and Twitter which you don't explicitily follow, but rather follow the users or content inside them. That's why I thought websites was too narrow. But I'm naming those two on the next line so yeah, I'll change 'content' to 'websites'. Thanks for all the iterative feedback man, appreciate it!
Yes, definitely. Thanks!
Could not agree more, your suggestion hits home for me.
I like the simplicity of it, plus putting RSS in the end makes it less of a problem for those that don't know what that is.
Yeah, I'll try to put screenshots and videos emphasizing the simplicity and elegance of the product instead.
I’m more concerned about the offer and who’s your audience. I personally don’t see the use for such app: I’m fine with having YouTube separately, Twitter separately, and the last time I used RSS was somewhere in 2012 — I guess news aggregator sites and apps like Google News spoiled us all with that regard.
Besides, I think there are already some apps doing that same kind of aggregation — is it something unique that you’re offering? some unique experience perhaps? because then it makes sense to stress on that. You seem to highlight "elegant" a lot — can you elaborate more on that?
It's not everyone who'd like this kind of product but there's a lot of people using Feedly for example, and Monocle is an alternative to that. So the users are there and it's a proven, profitable business.
About my offering, check out the landing page @ monoclereader.com, it's still not 100% polished of course but there's a nice roadmap at the bottom. And I'm doing some serious progress on features like the browser extension and a nice overall redesign which I think makes it stand out from Feedly.
Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure I came across your product few weeks ago on Reddit and actually praised your public roadmap, lol.
Anyway, I would head to a FOMO based headline:
"Never miss your favorite content again."
"Monocle Reader puts Youtube videos, tweets, blog posts and everything YOU care in one place."
Just look how Feedly actually does something similar right now:
"Keep up with all the topics that MATTER TO YOU. All in one place."
And they actually use the word "miss" to evoke FOMO later on:
"Don't miss a beat from New York Times or any other industry journal you trust."
I can’t say I like Feedly’s tagline. Every time I see phrasing like "matter to you" it feels like they’re trying to assume what I want instead of providing clear explanation of what they offer. Or it’s deliberately too vague to cover the fact that their functionality is not so much really (and "all the topics that matter to you" end up being just "we show you content from RSS feeds by categories")
Playing with the FOMO, interesting.
Funny you came by it on Reddit and now here, hehe.
How about something like this?
Now it’s not feature-oriented, but benefit-oriented.
Okay, this is honestly very cool!
And it gives a better understanding of what you’re offering. Is it a standalone app (e.g. Electron?) I totally see a selling proposition there that says to me: how about instead of checking your feeds all the time because of FOMO, we alert you whenever new content comes up.
Also, I never used Feedly or Pocket. But even if you are going to market to those audiences, you'd rather not piggyback — otherwise there’ll some trademark violation waiting to happen.
Could there really be a problem if I mention Feedly or Pocket on my website? I'm not sure. I guess there could since I'm actually also trying to steal their customers...
About alerting users when there's new content: I'm not doing that cause it implies a complete rework of the technical part of the website, since I'd have to run cron jobs or something to update the feeds. The way it is now it's users who press the update button so that plays a bit with the FOMO and is lighter on my server.
I am not a lawyer, but from the screenshot you posted in your other reply, I’d say this looks very very risky.
Here’s my landing page. My tagline has the word Google in it. And even though I’ve seen lots of examples of "comparative advertisement" before (e.g. Mac vs PC, or car manufacturers banter in ads), every time I get a Google partner newsletter I have a mini heart attack, fearing it’s a cease-and-desist and account termination notice. Feels very much on the edge, and every day I’m getting more and more inclined to change it (in fact, I have done so already in many places.)
Re not alerting users — got it. Still, what do you think about my other suggestion,
I think it captures your offer perfectly, is clear for non-tech users (and the screenshot/video and feature details down the page will hint on similarities with Pocket and Feedly), is concise, and is benefit oriented. People will immediately see the benefit: they have used to check different sites for updates, but now it’s all at a glance, so no more time wasting checking those sources one by one.
Hey, I totally didn't know you made Three.do! Awesome app you made there, congrats once again (althought I'm not a reminder-app user (so I'm not using it), I really loved the UX and the overall experience).
Yeah, I'm dropping the 'aggressive' name dropping towards Feedly and Pocket, I'll keep that for blog posts and promoting it maybe.
Although I'm actually naming Twitter and YouTube too... oh well.
Btw, check out the other comment, I updated the motto, once again, hehe.
Well at least you’re not saying that you’re better than Twitter and YouTube at something, lol.
I liked the current copy. So much that signed up :-)
I agree with others on the "Show, not tell" approach.
At first glance, what I thought when I saw your page was: "Great, I want my feed to be owned by me not Facebook", I am not sure if this is something that others would relate to.
Awesome! Welcome aboard, let me know if there's any issue or if you have any feedback.
Yeah, I'll keep it more in line with the 'show, not tell' approach..
👍
"Monocle: Read and save YOUR internet, your way."
Some people (like me) might not know what Feedly or Pocket is, or what an RSS for that matter, but by putting emphasis on "YOUR" internet you are saying, that are things they are interested on, videos, twitter news etc. With "your way" you can organize it and ready is when needed.
I agree that people might not know what Feedly, Pocket or RSS are so I should probably leave those out but 'read and save your internet, your way' sounds like thin air, like, it's not saying anything about the product or anything... idk...
Generally this would require a few back and forth iterations, so here's my first stab at it:
Monocle - Feedly meets Pocket meets elegance: Explore, Save and Love RSS feeds, video and social.
It's modular, so you can remove parts or replace the last bit with just Love the Web.
Sounds better, and more concise.
What about:
Monocle - Feedly & Pocket meet elegance: Explore, Save and Love your feeds, video and social.
Sounds like you got a winner Martty
I like it. But what about those who don't know what Feedly and/or Pocket are? Won't they just read that and fly away?
You can't convert at 100%, worrying about that is needless.
Also, very few people in your target audience would not have heard of those two, and those who have heard are a huge segment anyway.
Most importantly, that's why you have the final part of the tagline, which mentions feeds, video and social.
True. Plus at the beginning I plan to promote it to current Feedly users and people who are already into RSS readers.
Crowdsource a list of people's favorite 50 news sources in each of:
tech
business
wellness or world issues or something of that sort
Just 3-4 diverse enough categories then you can market it to people who don't know what RSS readers are based on the one stop shop and customizability of RSS but already having news sources in place.
Yes! I'm planning to do that: build a few generic categories and have a feed-back to follow with just one click. Also thought about making more localized sections so if I know the user is connecting from New York (via ip check or Google info maybe) then I'd make a pack which includes The New York Times and some other local newspapers for example. So it's a more tailored experience.
Who is your target customer? What improvement in their lives are they hoping to get from your solution?
Target customer is whoever reads the same bunch of websites on a daily basis. Content consumers. Or simply current Feedly users (and from other readers)...
What I'm trying to provide them is an easier and simpler way to centralize all their sources of information and allow them to save time instead of opening several tabs and scrolling through entire websites.
my advice, avoid using someone else's brand in your tagline. think about why people use feedly. arguably the market of non-consumers of feedly vastly exceeds the feedly users. why is that?
Yeah, I won't use it on my tagline.
I don't understand your point on the feedly market, what do you mean?
feedly is not mainstream. think about why that is? most people have no clue what an RSS reader is.
Exactly! That's why I decided to keep out 'RSS' from the tagline too. And I plan on marketing Monocle as a time saver and a content aggregator/news reader instead of an RSS Reader, which is it's 'technical' name
This is too much. You need to slim it down about to half the length. I think something like this would work better:
On the second proposal I think it’s too generic and doesn’t really explain what your product does.
Thanks for the feedback Francesco! What about "Read RSS, Twitter, YouTube and blogs all in one place."? So I don't repeat 'Monocle' too much.
Another thing I thought is about completely trying to avoid the acronym 'RSS' since non technical users don't know what it stands for and how it works so it just doesn't mean anything to them.
I agree on both points