Learn About the Power of a Strong Tagline

By PChip | Category: Business Management |

In the first part of this article we looked at how business branding is about more than your logo. I shared my views on how branding is actually the way your business is perceived by the customer. Then we dove into taking a closer look at our businesses to answer a few questions that will help really bring this into perspective and help solidify the concept of business branding.

Painting an Image for Your Customer

The answers to the who, what, how, and why questions I asked - is what’s used to develop the powerhouse piece for your branding promotions. With those answers sitting in front of you, create a few statements that paint an image you want to burn into your customers minds. Consider how you want them to think of you.

If a customer is describing your company to a friend, what would you want to hear them say? To continue using DSD-Pro as the default ginny pig example here, I would want to hear them say, “DSD-Pro is that company that is looking out for the digital scrapbooking community by sharing cool business info with us.” “DSD-Pro is where I go to find out how to strengthen my Digi-Scrap Business.” “When I have a question about the digi-scrap industry, DSD-Pro is one of my first stops.” etc.

Now with those statements in hand, either pick the one that stands out the most to you or create a single statement from the mix. Preferably a statement less than 8 words long that a customer can remember off the top of their head. One that says in as few words as possible, who you are, what you do, how you do it… and states a benefit to the customer and/or how you stand out from the crowd of other businesses in your niche.

Look for the Common Thread

If you are finding yourself stuck, look for a word or string of words that you see repeated in the statements you just came up with. For DSD Professionals - the theme is “business information” and “digital scrapbooking”. So what tag line did I come up with? Take a look at our logo in the top left corner of our website.

Resources for Making Money with Digital Scrapbooking

That’s the tag line we came up with. But I must admit, we aren’t content with that tag line. Which is one of the reasons we haven’t really begun any business branding with it yet. We’re still fiddling around with ideas for really building trust with our prospective customers. It tells what we do and who we are, but doesn’t lend itself to “how” we serve our customers.

Treat the Tag Line with the Importance it Deserves

We are giving further thought and consideration because we know that this single little statement is really the foundation of your branding. It’s more important than your logo. Think about the companies you trust and believe in. What are the tag lines or the statements they use to continue building a relationship with you the prospective customer?

Here’s a few examples popular in the USA:

Like a Good Neighbor - State Farm is There
Coke - The Real Thing
Clariton Clear, Clariton Free
With Allstate You’re in Good Hands

Without looking can you tell me what the logo looks like for all four of those products and services? Probably not. But I’ll bet you recognized the tag line and when you think of that company - you think of them as: State Farm - dependable; Coke - real and original; Clariton - comforting; Allstate - friendly and trustworthy. It isn’t their logo that created that image in your head.

Developing Your Brand

These companies have used their tagline in combination with other elements such as their logo to create an image in the customers mind. They developed their brand by including their personal statements in every piece of advertisement, on every piece of marketing material, in everything they present to their prospective customers. Whether it was a commercial jingle, closing line in a sales pitch, or the statement typed under the sales rep title on their name tag - the statement was there.

They used colors in their uniforms, on their logos, on their stationary, with their product packaging and sales brochures - that further branded the image they are portraying with their tag line. They put in front of our faces certain types of people in particular settings, that adds to the business brand they want us to associate with them.

A Catchy Phrase Is Not Enough

Make sure your tag line has depth and is meaningful enough to represent the identity you want your customers to have about you. Then and only then add your logo, develop packaging materials, decide on colors, and mix them all together to build the perfect business brand to create that bond between you and your customer.

Like I said in the first article, remember that your logo helps create and reinforce brand awareness. But by itself it is not your brand… or least it isn’t if you are doing business branding correctly. A logo is merely another element used in your marketing campaigns and your business branding projects to support building that relationship with your customers.

By answering the questions you asked yourself when reading the first part of this series, you began developing a picture in your head of who you are and how you serve your customer. You began “branding” your company to yourself. Now it’s time to do this with your customers.

You Have the Tools - Here’s How to Use Them

Take the answers to the questions asked throughout this article and use them to continue branding your company into your own mind. Combine your logo with your tagline. Now get to work being repetitive with them in front of your customers. Use the statements you came up with earlier when in discussions with your clients and ALWAYS close with your tag line. Include that power house tagline in your web presence. Add it to your thank you notes, your business cards, and your public presentations. Put it on your invoices. Adopt the attitude that goes along with this branding and let it ooze out of you in front of your customers.

Don’t Make the Mistake Other Businesses Do

Your logo isn’t your brand. The term “branding” isn’t a buzzword that’s trendy in the marketing world. Slapping your logo on everything related to your business does not, in and of itself, create a relationship with your customers. Those are all myths.

You Know the Truth and Have the Power to Brand Your Company Well

If you followed along with this article and worked through the questions and statement building exercises then you’ve done some significant work towards building a strong brand for your company. That one little tagline statement becomes the theme of everything you do when marketing to your customers now. It’s the foundation of your branding as much as, if not more than, that graphical little logo you designed when you first started playing around with putting yourself in front of your customer.

Keep that fact in focus and at the fore front of your thoughts as you brand your business and you’re going to become a rememberable company with loyal customers!

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Tags: Business Branding, concepts, digital-scrapbooking-industry

One comment
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David September 12th, 2007 7:07 pm :
Some great, great advice in these two articles.

Remember not to develop your brand in isolation. Do a positional analysis - look at all the competition you can find and see how their offerings differ. Plot out their range of products, styles, prices, marketing techniques, speed of service, delivery mechanisms and quality and look for a gap.

As an example, there may be a gap for someone offering expensive products alongside a hand-holding service, especially for nervous beginners.
Maybe another gap may exist for a lower cost product, but with less personal attention, for the more experienced scrapper.

Look at what you can offer that is currently under-represented. Maybe there is a market for exquisitely-crafted, digital buttons made to order with telephone consultation, or maybe just a sheet of them for a buck.

When you have found your niche, THAT is the time to develop your brand to suit.

Think about the name - “Buttons Goin’ Cheap” is going to position your brand differently to “Lady Jane’s Digital Scrapbook Emporium”.

Think about colors - Expensive products work best with rich colors - deep reds, blues, greens. Brighter colors such as yellow and bright red imply a quicker and less personal service.

Think about that Tagline. At Aardvark, we chose “We do the Aartwork to save you the Aardwork.” We are trying to link together the value proposition - that we do the difficult stuff for you - while using a sense of humor to reflect our character - as well as linking Aardvark with the words artwork and hardwork. It helps to have the words “we”, “save” and “you” in there too.

If you look at our site, there is nothing really flowery there. We just don’t do flowers. We are aiming for the sharp and alternative area of scrapping, not the sentimental.

There is a gap for you - look hard and choose well.