An imaginative and memorable slogan can be a very important key to getting your business, group or enterprise known and remembered. Depending on your age, I'll bet you can remember a lot of strong slogans years (even decades) after they're no longer being used:

• Winston tastes good like a cigarette should

• Avis is number two. We try harder.

• Fly the friendly skies of United.

• I'm coo-coo for Coco Puffs.

• Army: Be all that you can be.

So, what's the secret of creating a slogan that gets noticed, remembered and acted upon?

1. Sell Your Strongest Benefit

If you'll remember in an earlier article on the One Grand Smart Marketing Plan, we showed how to come up with your USP - your Unique Selling Proposition. This is your "reason to buy" - the strongest, most unique benefit you offer your customer.

Your USP should be the basis of your slogan - though by itself, it may not be memorable enough to use alone as a slogan.

If you haven't honed down a really strong USP, go back and do that now - it's crucial. If YOU can't sum up in a compact sentence or two why someone should use your product or join your group, don't expect a prospect to figure it out on his own.

2. Brainstorm Variations

The object is to come up with the shortest, most evocative and most memorable summation of your chief benefit. Try a brainstorming session of about 30 minutes (preferably with some trusted friends or associates) and see how many variations of your USP you can spin out.

Don't censor or edit as you go, just get as many out in 30 minutes as you possible can - even if a bunch of them are silly or seemingly worthless.

If you get stuck, try this online slogan generator for fun. It might spark a few ideas.

Here's another called the "Sloganizer".

3. Edit Relentlessly

Once you have a good selection of options, put on your editor's hat and cut all the worst ones. Then cut the next worst. Keep at until you have three that have some potential.

4. Edit Again

It's almost an axiom: the shorter your slogan, the better it is. Try cutting down your top choices to the LEAST possible words to convey the message. See if you can find the most evocative words possible, words that have a lot of inherent emotion, action and meaning.

Try to find one word that can do the work of several. Cut any word that doesn't add strongly to the idea.

Often the most memorable slogans have rhythm. They rhyme (see the Winston example above) or they repeat sounds (coo-coo for Cocoa) or they have a beat to them something like a memorable song lyric. ("When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight".)

5. Test It

Like any representation of your enterprise, it doesn't really matter what YOU think of it; if you expect to succeed, it matters what your potential customer thinks of it - or even more important, what they UNDERSTAND of it.

So, test two or three slogans on people who are like the people you want to attract. Don't just ask one or two, try to get as many responses as possible. And, who knows, you might get some responses that help you refine even the best slogan - it has certainly happened in my career.

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