Taglines or slogans have been an integral part of advertising and marketing for centuries. Much like a logo, your tagline encapsulates your mission, your brand and the benefits of your business. With just a few words, an effective tagline can summarize the essence of what you are promoting as well as communicating a positive feeling about your company. It is an effective tool for making your business stand out and allowing people to know immediately what you are offering.
Including your tagline in all of your marketing and sales materials is as essential as including your logo. It must be a part of every interaction you have and should be present anywhere your logo and business name appear to help differentiate your business from the competition. Whenever you hand someone a business card or brochure, or reach out to potential customers with a postcard, door hangers or flyer, it’s a chance to get your message and your company’s promise to customers across in a simple phrase. So be sure to give it thought and creativity that it deserves.
The objective of your tagline is to let people know what is distinctive about your business with a simple, memorable phrase that is easily repeated. If you are a carpet cleaner, why should they choose you? Are you the quickest? Available 24/7? Do you have the most advanced cleaning methods? Is your customer service outstanding? What would make your customers want to have you in their home as opposed to you competition?
Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind when developing a tagline for your company.
Short & Sweet Is Best
Try to keep your slogan under ten words at the very most. Anything more than that may cause people to stop reading and miss the point. Additionally, the longer phrase the more difficult it becomes to easily incorporate it onto a business card or other printed material. BMW and their slogan ‘The Ultimate Driving Machine’ is a great example.
Try To Paint A Picture
We all know the old cliche, a picture is worth a 1000 words. Your tagline should work the same way. An effective catchphrase can help conjure an image that people can use to identify your business or product more easily. A good example of this is ‘Let your fingers do the walking’. That phrase clearly identifies an action representative of what the Yellow Pages are all about.
Be Expressive With Identifying Characteristics
A tagline that describes the attribute that makes the product unique can be a huge success. This is sometimes tricky to do with only a few words; however it is a very important thing to keep in mind. The Kentucky Fried Chicken tagline is an excellent example, because people know exactly what ‘Finger-lickin good!’ means.
Trial & Error Is Important
For every good tagline that you hear, there are several more that are not good. Bad taglines are typically vague, confusing, negative or ambiguous – and may communicate an unintended message. Does ‘Why fool around with anyone else?’ really make you think of FedEx? Fortunately, that tagline was retired and replaced with one that works much better – ‘Absolutely, positively overnight’. This is a perfect illustration of why you should ask the opinion of several people before unveiling your final choice.
The importance of an effective tagline to your business’s success cannot be overstated enough. At Printing Solutions, we produce the high quality, full color custom business cards, printed brochures, door hangers and letterhead that can prominently display your tagline and more. When you are ready to update your marketing materials, let us know and we can incorporate your message into the design of all of your printed products, creating maximum impact with every interaction.