First Person: Using a Tagline as a Sales Tool
I've been in sales and marketing management for over 30 years now, including six years as a small business owner and 9 years as a small business consultant. I've noticed that most of my small business clients haven't had a tagline. Of the few, who have, they typically were meaningless so had little or no impact on the company's sales.
Meaningless Taglines
Taglines or slogans are marketing statements about what makes you unique. Their goal is to attract customers and make sales. If prospects see it as meaningless, they will ignore it.
There are several ways that a tagline or slogan becomes meaningless. First off, it can talk all about you and how great you are. Prospects don't care about how wonderful you are until they decide that you have something they want.
Secondly, taglines and slogans are meaningless when people see them as fluff. For instance, everybody out there says "We have the best employees." You should believe that you have the best employees. You hired them.
Two Most Common Meaningless Taglines
- Best employees
- Highest quality
If you want to claim your employees are so great, have someone else, like J.D. Power & Associates, say so. When talking about your employees, someone else needs to state how wonderful they are. Because you are biased, your comment lacks credibility.
How to Make Believable Claims
If you want to claim the greatest quality, have a 3rd party's seal of approval:
- Have a reputable third party, ideally a recognized authority, make the claim for you.
- Get a quality certification, like an ISO-9000 or a QS-9000 certification.
Another way is to make statements that you can prove:
- 97.999% On time delivery
- 99.2% error free manufacturing
- 4.5/5.0 customer satisfaction rating on Amazon
Using Your Tagline to Appeal to Prospects
While my examples above show how to improve on typical taglines, they still lack marketing appeal. Why is that? It's because of where the focus lies. Who do those statements talk about?
Those taglines talk about you. The biggest problem with most marketing taglines is they brag about how great you are without speaking to your prospects' concerns. The first question in everyone's mind when they see a tagline or hear a slogan is "What's in it for me?"
My favorite tagline is Hallmark's: "When you care enough to send the very best." Admittedly, they staked out the quality high ground. You can do that too if you have the advertising budget. Most small businesses don't have millions for advertising and marketing. In Hallmark's case, the benefit is that by sending a Hallmark card, your recipient knows that you care for them enough to buy the very best.
The following are two of my taglines aimed at the concerns of my prospects:
- Help customers buy: "Making selling fun, fulfilling, and mutually rewarding"
At the time I used this, I was focused on sales training consulting. My business name describes a relationship selling attitude where you are addressing what your customers want to do. Then you help them do it. The tagline describes the benefits to you for using this approach.
- Aberle Enterprises: "Building your profits through strong relationships"
This tagline covers relationship selling plus relationships with employees and your business finances and others while also covering your concern about making a profit.
Unique Selling Proposition
In an age where more than ever we must differentiate ourselves to thrive, we need to share what makes us unique. Why should a prospect buy from us instead of from the other merchants and service providers available. Your unique selling proposition or USP helps attract buyers.
It is most effective when it addresses the concerns of prospects matching your ideal customer profile. There are no universal sales appeals so aim at people most likely to want what you provide. You must get their attention quickly. That's where your tagline can come in.
Make it short and as memorable as possible. Show and tell prospects what they gain from doing business with you. Tweak it to show your unique value to your prospects.
Grow your sales by attracting prospects most likely to become customers. Aim your marketing efforts at their concerns. Skip self-serving claims, especially those prospects will view as fluff. Create a tagline that covers the unique benefits they get from doing business with you.
*Note: This was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Do you have a small business story that you'd like to share? Sign up with the Yahoo! Contributor Network to start publishing your own finance articles.
More from this contributor:
First Person: Branding a Small Business
First Person: Sales Success Means Focusing on Your Ideal Customer Profile
First Person: Using Metrics and Your Ideal Customer Profile to Increase Sales
