What Makes a Great Tagline And How Do You Make Yours Memorable?
Designing Your Business Communication
Taglines are little blurbs that get added on in all kinds of different places like at the end of emails and Tweets or other posts in forums that gives others a little “shot” of who you are. When you use them in a personal venue, it can be anything from a brassy statement, especially if you’re a gamer, to a quotable quote from a famous person that gives a hint of your philosophy. Statements like:
“Mess with the best, die like the rest!”
“You’ve been owned and cloned!” (usually written in ‘leet speak as “U b33n p4n3d N kl0n4d”)
“Always store beer in a dark place – Lazarus Long”
are all about messing with other people as gamers do, or as an expression of a personal thought/philosophy.
However, when you use it for your business, you want it to be about your business, your business philosophy or your business attitude and what that will do for your customer.
So what makes a great tagline? First of all, it has to be short. People won’t read a tagline that is much over 5 words long in most cases. Tweets have shown that people won’t really read a message that’s much over 100 words, so having that “personal statement” as a signature has to be proportionally short. Another factor, especially when doing taglines about your business is that, even though it’s about your business, you want it to be about who’s reading it. Here are a few examples:
“Our business is your business”
“We’ll make you our priority”
“Your needs are our needs”
While those are a little on the trite side, those are ones that give people the sense that you are in business to help them get things accomplished, or that your products are what they want. We all know the great ones that the big companies use, because we can quote them back. For instance:
“Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there”
“You deserve a break today”
“I’d like to buy the world a Coke”
All instantly recognizable, all about helping or supporting or giving the person reading it what they want or need. While you don’t get a lot of word-space in a tagline, you do get the opportunity to get some “emotion” into it. That’s where the great taglines are memorable. Sit down and write some down. See which ones stand out in your mind when you re-read them. Find one you’re comfortable with and add it to your signature on your emails and Tweets and other forum posts. That way, when people read your posts, they’ll get a feeling for who you are and how your business will benefit them.