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A tagline is a small amount of text used in business marketing materials and advertising whose aim is to clarify and summarize an intended thought or dramatic effect. Most of them reiterate phrases associated with individuals, products or social groups that may have been presented in form of literature or audio – visual. Their intention is to make the message unforgettable in the minds of an audience.
Importance of a
Tagline in Branding
The
brand tagline of your business is an essential component of its branding strategy.
It comes second after the business logo in terms of what will appeal to your clientele
and inform them about what your business is all about. In essence, a brand
tagline carries your business identity as well as what products or services you
offer.
To prosper in the world of business with
its cut-throat competition, you must appreciate that people are more likely to
do business with personalities they can identify with and share their values.
Your tagline will therefore come in handy in revealing who you are and what you
stand for.
Taglines
establish a customer’s trust in your products or services and your ability to
deliver whatever you have promised. Care therefore has to be taken to make sure
that you hold up your end of the bargain in as far as the promises you make in
your tagline are concerned.
The
tagline also presents an opportunity for your business to unravel what sets it
apart from the rest of the pack. What gives you an edge over your competitors?
A good example is the Beats by Dre headphones’ tagline, “Heat what You Want”.
It clearly paints the picture that you should choose these particular
headphones in order to get a new personal experience with your music.
So, how to create an
unforgettable tagline?
The
survivors in today’s business are those who do the little things to gain
competitive advantage. The importance of a brand tagline cannot be
over-emphasized and as such, businesses must make sure that they get it right.
Merely throwing together a bunch of rhymes or puns may therefore fail to do the
trick. The message carried by your tagline must be in such a way as to speak to
the product as well as establish a brand philosophy.
To this end, make sure that the
tagline you come up with for your business is short and catchy. Something like BMW’s
“The ultimate driving machine”, Apple's "Think different" and Nike's "Just do it", captures the brand essence and positioning, commands action and succeeds in immediately conveying the right message to the customers. The free lesson
here for both small and large business owners is that a good tagline will help
you get ahead of the rest.
When
coming up with your tagline, ensure you maintain focus on selling the benefits
of what you have to offer and an essence of the brand. In short, the end user
must not escape your mind at any one time. Tell them what it is that you offer
that they want. Also,
an unforgettable tagline has to carry your personality, business values and be
a reflection of your brand. This has to be done using the most direct and
concise words possible that evoke and inspire your purpose. In this way a
tagline then functions to save you a lot of expenditure on any advertising you
would have to do to promote and strategically position your brand.
Additionally,
it is important that you test your tagline before you put it out there. Run it
by your customers, employees or even family first to make sure that you come up
with the right one. Since not all of us are word smiths, don’t shy away from
asking for help or launching a contest to come up with the best.
It
is also note-worthy that in an effort to achieve more objectives in a tagline,
you may end up with a generic tagline that fails to realize the desired effect,
which is to strengthen and reinforce the crux of your brand and product. You
must therefore ensure that you keep it simple and short (less than ten words to
be on the safe side) yet unforgettable. “Magically Delicious” by Lucky Charms is
an example of the use of taglines that have been so successful as to form part
of pop culture.
In
recent times, with the increase of videos and blog posts as mediums of
marketing, the temptation to consider the written word as irrelevant and out of
place is quite real. However, any business nursing ambitions of being a mover
and shaker in their industry must appreciate that the written word has the rare
ability to transcend across all marketing mediums and disciplines. This speaks
to the importance of a good and well-crafted tagline.
The
primary role of content marketing, according to Forbes Magazine, is to
introduce and explore the philosophy and values of a brand. Choose a good
tagline and make your business prosper.